Giggles and Crayons

Pinkalicious Musical

2012-02-12T12:37:00.001-05:00

My daughter, my niece and I had a fun girls afternoon out when we went together to see the Pinkalicious Musical. It was so much fun! It was the first play that my niece had been to. She is a very sensitive kid, so when the lights first starting dimming, she started whimpering. I don’t know what she thought was going to happen, but she loved it once it started.

I bought them each a cupcake with pink frosting.

They also had an opportunity to make a craft. They drew green foods on a fan and then I helped them tie green yarn to it. Anabel drew green beans and Alicia drew pickles. Then when the green food comes to rescue at the end of the musical, they had the opportunity to wave their fans in the air! All the way home, Anabel and her cousin pretended to be Pinkalicious and her brother. It was so cute! Now Anabel says she wants a Pinkalicious birthday party. We will see if she changes her mind before July. She had been saying she wanted a Wizard of Oz party before.

You can see some of the Pinkalicious activities we did.

They Said It

2012-02-12T12:10:00.001-05:00

*Anabel loves to look at pictures of herself especially when she was a baby and she will always say, “that was me when I was a baby!” I took the above picture to make the Pinkatitus craft that we did. When she saw me preparing the picture on my computer (I made it black and white) she said “that was me when I was yellow!”

*Anabel learns a lot at school and she uses some it against her brother. One day her brother was going to bite her but she said loudly “stop and think about your choices!” Then another day Roman was jumping around the couch and she said, “good listeners hold still!”

Pinkalicious: Case of Pinkatitus

2012-02-12T11:54:00.001-05:00

For Christmas I gave my daughter a book kit subscription. The January book was Pinkalicious and one of the activities that I included was a Pinkatitus face craft. In the book, Pinkalicious eats too many cupcakes and turns pink! She even has pink tears! So I took a picture of Anabel and made it black and white and then printed it out. She colored it with a pink highlighter and glued on some pink hair (yarn) and gave her self pink tears (pink puffy paint drops). She also signed her name with the puffy paint. I also printed out one for my son but he just tore the paper in half. He is much less crafty than my daughter was at that age. He likes to color with crayons occasionally and tear up paper though.

You can also read all of our Book Kit posts!

Helping in the Kitchen

2012-02-12T10:43:00.001-05:00

Anabel has always been ready to help in the kitchen. The above picture is her around 3 (plus a couple of months) crumbling up some queso fresco for dinner.

Here is a more recent picture of her cutting up avocados.

Here is another recent pic of her helping me making some muffins. She loves to say, “me and my mom are good cookers” or “we are good bakers” or “we are good sandwich makers”.

3 1/2 Year Old Interview

2012-02-12T10:38:00.001-05:00

I give my daughter periodic interviews and below is the one that I gave her when she turned 3 1/2 years old. I think I want to start asking her questions that don’t produce such simple answers, more open ended.

1. What do you like to eat?

Baby carrots.

2. Tell me about your mom.

I love her.

3. Tell me about your dad.

I love him too.

4. Tell me about your brother?

I like to play with him.

5. What is your favorite book?

(She looks around the room and sees If You Give a Cat a Cupcake) Umm. If You Give a Cat a Cupcake.

6. What is your favorite movie?

Rapunzel.

7. What is your favorite thing to do?

Play. Play. Play.

8. Who is your best friend?

Shamel (a classmate…she says her best friend is whoever is her partner that week).

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

A grownup. (So I ask her where she wants to work). At school, teachers work at school, right?

10. Tell me a joke.

Knock Knock

(me: Who’s there?)

Bananas

(me: Bananas who?)

Anabel!

A Tasty Bug

2012-02-12T10:27:00.001-05:00

Anabel came across one of my emergent reader booklets called A Tasty Bug. The book is just the instructions to make an apple ladybug (similar to this one). Luckily, we had all the ingredients on hand so we had to opportunity to go to the kitchen and make it right away!

Pinkalicious Drink

2012-02-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

One of our Pinkalicious activities was to make a pink drink: pink lemonade! We made homemade lemonade by squeezing lemons, adding sugar, and then a little bit of cranberry juice (to achieve a pink color). It was yummy!

We are doing Pinkalicious activities as part of the Book Kit subscription that I gave my daughter for Christmas.

More ACTIVE-ities We Did

2012-01-15T18:09:00.001-05:00

One day last week we went bowling. I think its only the 3rd time that we have taken Anabel and Roman’s 2nd (but he wasn’t even crawling the first time).

Soon after we arrived, I had my camera ready to take a pic and Roman took off running down the lane and my husband chased after him. Well they both lost their footing and slipped right in the middle! Good thing I had my camera ready lol! Roman didn’t try to run down it again. Anabel said, “whoa Mom, this is a slippery game!”

On a Saturday night, we went to an indoor play area. The ball pit was the main attraction for my kids. My daughter was pretending that she was taking a bath in a really big bath. She lost her sock somewhere in there!

We went for a walk on a local walking trail. Part of the trail is a bridge over a big pond.

The pic I took was horrible, but we saw nine of the cutest, fluffiest baby ducks ever! My kids were mesmerized! We saw lots of different birds out there on the trail including a flock of ibis, an egret, sandhill cranes, a moorhen and even an eagle! Living in the south, there are still lots of birds in the winter!

There is also a large hill on the trail that my children enjoyed running up and down on. They also rolled down it! Part of the trail is close to a train track, so we got to see a train go by.

I also wanted to point out Roman’s favorite Christmas gift was a small basketball hoop. The pic is right after he did a slam dunk. He plays with it all day long. He loves balls of any size and shape!

Pinkalicious Cupcakes

2012-01-15T17:40:00.001-05:00

One of Anabel’s Christmas gifts was a (homemade) monthly book kit. January’s book was Pinkalicious. Included in the kit was the supplies to make Pinkalicious cupcakes! They were strawberry flavored, which is my husband’s favorite.

Of course, Roman was involved. He had a sneaky little grin on his face the entire time, like as if he was getting away with something.

Other Pinkalicious things we did and other posts about our book kit subscription.

They Said It

2012-01-15T17:30:00.001-05:00

I was shopping for some clothes and Anabel went into the dressing room with me. I told her to close the door behind her. She said “why?” and I told her because I didn’t want anyone to see me changing. So she hid her face in the corner and said that she wouldn’t look. Then she said, “I can’t see you! I can’t see you! But my nails can!” as she held up her hand.

Another day we were at a store and someone asked her what her name is. After she told them, she said “My mommy gave me my name when I was in her tummy. She didn’t buy it, she just gave it to me” The woman started laughing out loud.

One of Roman’s new phrases is “wake up” as he is indeed waking up everyone! He is always the first one up!

Pinkalicious Playdough

2012-01-07T14:15:00.001-05:00

For Christmas, I gave Anabel a “subscription” to a monthly book kit (I actually just put the kits together myself). For January, the book was Pinkalicious. You can see what was in the kit here. In the kit, I included some pink glitter, some cream of tartar and the recipe for pink playdough. The other ingredients that are needed are salt, flour, red food coloring, and water. I decided to leave those in the kitchen rather than putting them in the kit!

Making playdough is so much fun. Its not only fun to play with it but its also fun to make it as well. Anabel and Roman both helped pour the ingredients in a pan. I stirred it on the stove.

Both kids helped me knead the dough and add the red food coloring and pink glitter to the dough.

It was all pink and sparkly. I opened the kitchen window so the sun would shine and show off all of the pink glitter (see first picture). I gave them some cookie cutters that I am sure Pinkalicious would approve of (butterfly, star, bird, and flower).

Other Pinkalicious things we did and more book kit boxes.

18 Months Update

2012-01-07T13:59:00.001-05:00

My baby boy recently made it to his 1 1/2 birthday. I celebrate their half birthdays with a special dessert…cake, ice cream or in this case ice cream! Yes, it is still warm enough to eat ice cream in December where we live. Here is my update on my little boy’s life thus far.

He really is ALL boy. He is immediately attracted to anything that has to do with balls, trucks or dinosaurs. But then again, he has been known to cuddle baby dolls. And he has a stuffed otter that he likes to carry around saying, “shh, shh, shh” to.

He is very rough and tumble. Its hard to believe looking at these angelic little sleeping photos. I am actually a little scared of him. My husband notices that sometimes I wince my face when he climbs on my lap, because I am anticipating him jumping on me and then inevitably bumping into my lip, eye or face. For real, I cannot lay on the carpet either because he jumps and climbs all over me but in a painfully rough way. He steps on my arm fat or on my hair on right on my spleen. He is laughing and giggling the whole time, not believing how much fun it is. He loves to listen to books, but he also likes to tear out the pages and write in them too! He is rough with other children too. For some reason, especially with my five year old niece. When she is around, he will always get in trouble at least once for pinching her or pulling her hair or something. Not cool, Roman, not cool.

But even after all of that, I love my little boy with all of my heart. Although he is very physical, he has lots of sweet moments as well. He will give random kisses to everyone. He loves to hug his sister. We do this thing called “family hugs” where he, his sister, my husband and I all hug each other really tight and yell “family hug!” or “Last name hug!” (insert our last name though) and now he will often initiate those by pulling us together and yelling, “aah hug!” He is still a mama’s boy but he has his moments where he only wants his daddy though. He is also very attached to my grandma and my cousin Alex. Especially Alex, we joke that he thinks she is his woman. One day, she had left something at my house, so I drove by her house to drop it off for her. I just handed it to her through the car window. I heard Roman in the back getting excited. Alex said hi and bye to the kids but as he saw her walk off, he started crying. He cried the whole way home for her. He really loves her. He says her name almost perfect. Anabel said “a-kicks” for the longest time. In the above pic, he actually fell asleep with one foot on the couch and one foot off as he was trying to climb on top of her.

He is a big time copycat of his sister. He is constantly doing things immediately after she does it, exactly the way she does it. He practices a lot of his talking that way. He is wearing her sunglasses in the above pic. Its so funny to watch him following her around. Sometimes when I get on to him for something he will run to his sister and cry and say, “Ah-bel, Mommy!” and she will comfort him. They also love to play ring around the rosies together, Roman likes to jump the gun and fall down before the part where he is supposed to though!

He is a serious meat eater. Its the weirdest thing because I really am not much of a beef eater but when I was pregnant, I was always craving ground beef burritos and steak fajitas. Now, he loves meat! Its always the first thing he eats on his plate. Of course, I know there is no way a fetus could be telling me that he wanted meat but I still think it is the weirdest coincidence! He is a really good eater. He is completely average and proportionate in height and weight but he loves to eat!

He says simple sentences already. He says, “here you go”, “I see you”, “Mommy watch”, “I fall” “daddy go work”, “bye car”. He thinks he talks much more than that, he will just babble on and on to us and then laugh hysterically like he told us some great joke!

I love you Roman Jose and I am so excited to watch you grow!

Gift Box: Pinkalicious

2012-01-07T13:45:00.001-05:00

A Christmas gift that I gave to Anabel was a “subscription” to a monthly book gift box that comes in the mail. Well it doesn’t really come in the mail, I just pretend it does because I put the gift boxes together myself and put them in a USPS box and she opens them. For Christmas, she got a certificate that I made on the computer but she had to wait for it in the mail. I wanted her to open it separate from her other gifts. I got this idea from another blog and have been collecting things for it since the summer. It was better that way because I picked up things as I found them.

I chose Pinkalicious for January because I knew that our local theater is putting on a Pinkalicious musical that I am going to take her to. But it was a really fun to put together because anything that has to do with the color pink, cupcakes or fairies pretty much fits into the theme.

One of the things in the box was a pink lemonade flavored chapstick. Perfect timing because she has been getting chapped lips right now and they really bother her!

The chapstick flavor really went well with the book that I included called Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink. We already have the original Pinkalicious book, although it is missing a page thanks to my son. The pink drink book is about Pinkalicious wanting to buy some gumballs so she decides to make a lemonade stand to raise some money. When her lemonade comes out yellow, she decides to add some ingredients such as beets, watermelon and frosting to try to make it pink. In the end, her mom comes up with the solution to add some strawberries to make it pink!

I added a Pinkalicious cover to a cake box so we can make our own pink cupcakes. Of course, I included pink sprinkles, cupcake liners, and cute pink toppers.

Next, I included a wand craft. Believe it or not, I have had these wands in my stash since Anabel’s first birthday when I used them to make favors for her first birthday. I really need to clean out my stuff more often lol.

I bought a pair of pink sparkly fairy wings and a glow-in-the-dark pink wand around Halloween at the Dollar Tree.

Also from DT, I got these cute stickers. They are not exactly Pinkalicious, but they are fairy princess, so close enough for me. And from Joanne’s, I picked up some cupcake foam stickers and a cupcake sports bottle.

I made a craft kit that includes a pink highlighter, pink paint, and pink yarn. I also included some of the ingredients to make pink sparkly playdough!

I bought a pack of silly bands on clearance from Wal-Mart’s party favor section. It had four different themes in the one package, so I divided it between the different gift boxes. The bands included in this box were the princess theme ones.

If you haven’t read the original Pinkalicious it is about a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes until she finally turns pink. The way she solves it is to eat lots of green food! In the book, when she is eating the green food she is calling it yucky and gross and I just skip over those words! As of right now, Anabel will gladly eat broccoli, green beans, peas and spinach (although she hates green bell peppers), so I don’t want her to start thinking those foods are gross. I like how those foods come to the rescue in the end!

Next month in the gift box: Madeline!

ACTIVE-ties This Week

2012-01-07T09:23:00.001-05:00

In our part of the USA, the late fall and winter is really the best time to be outdoors. The summer is really way too hot so we only go outside in the early morning and the late evening. But from about October to March, we are outside as much as we can be. Some “active” things we have done recently:

Anabel got a new big girl bike from her cousin Alicia for Christmas and she got a new bike helmet from my aunt Jewel. She loves riding her tricycle so she is very excited to have a “real” bike (with training wheels though). My son inherited the tricycle now, he hasn’t quite mastered pedaling yet.

Two local parks have recently been renovated and we visited both of them (not on the same day). I just noticed that I tend to alot of pics of the kids on the swings when we are at the park. I guess because it is the only time that I am not chasing my son around! At this first park, my cousin Alex went with me and we acting like kids ourselves! We had a race and we were swinging on the swings too.

The second park we went to had a see-through rock climbing wall. Both of my kids attempted it (with a little help from us).

More swing pics! The park had some weird swings. Anabel didn’t like it, she wanted off right after the pic.

Of course, there is lots of play outside in our backyard!

We invented (well at least we think we did) our own game inspired by hopscotch. We called it Checkerboard Hop. We made a grid on the driveway, I think it was 6 x 6. Each person took a turn throwing the stone on a grid. Whatever square the stone landed on, that person colored it in with a piece of chalk. Then that person had to jump across the grid but he or she is not allowed to jump on colored squares. Of course, it got increasingly harder. It was fun watching Anabel try to maneuver through the squares. I don’t love my jolly green giant leg shadows :(

They Said It

2012-01-07T09:20:00.001-05:00

I was showing Anabel the game “Cinderella Dressed in Yellow”. We used to play when we were kids by putting our feet together and singing, “Cinderella dressed in Yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella, kissed a snake by mistake, how many doctors did it take?” We touched a foot while we were singing and whosever foot was touched as we said the word “take” got to choose a number. Then we counted to that number and the foot that was touched as the counting completed had to get “out”. The last foot left won! We also used to play that game singing “bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish, how many pieces do you wish?” Anabel really liked the game but then she said it was her turn to make a song. What she came up with was, “Snow White, Snow White, went upstairs to see the people. How many people were up in there?” it was really cute because she sang it exactly to the tune of the Cinderella song.

Anabel calls people on the passenger side of the car the stayer. I asked her why and she said, “because they just stay there, they don’t drive or go anyway” lol.

Roman has started to like Franklin as much as Anabel does. Recently he was walking through the house yelling “Eagle! Eagle”…well its drawn out, more like “eeee-----gguuuuuuuuhhhhhlllll!” I was trying to figure out where he got that from and then I realized it was from the movie, Franklin and the Green Knight.

Halloween 2011

2012-01-01T10:16:00.001-05:00

For Halloween this year, my children dressed up as characters from Wizard of Oz. Of course, Anabel was Dorothy. My son was the Cowardly Lion.

We went trick-or-treating with my brother-in-law Felipe, my sister-in-law and my niece (she was The Little Mermaid). Every year, we avoid any people with scary costumes by just diverting their attention or walking away from them. This year, one of my brother-in-law’s friends was dressed up as a sumo wrestler and he ran over to say hello to him and it scared Anabel, she yelled and hid behind her uncle. I guess a large naked man (not really naked, it was a costume of course) running towards her was terrified. On the way home, she told us that her dad protected her and kicked the scary man (that didn’t happen of course).

Thanksgiving Pies

2012-01-01T09:55:00.001-05:00

Wow, this is really late! Actually, I still have to work on a Halloween post as well. We have a tradition of making homemade pies the night before thanksgiving. Anabel and I made pumpkin pie. My cousin Alex made an apple pie.

They Said It

2012-01-01T09:51:00.001-05:00

*Anabel asked me for a line with cheese on it. She was asking for a breadstick!

*I heard Anabel singing Skin-a-ma-rinky-doo to herself as she was playing. Here were her lyrics: I love you last night, I love you right now, I love you forever.

*Lately, when I get on to Roman he quickly runs to Anabel and tells on me and then they hug. He says, “ah-bell, ah-bell, mommy! mommy!” One time, Anabel took his hand and said, “come on, we will take a walk.” And they left the room holding hands :)

Storytime

2012-01-01T09:40:00.001-05:00

Just a pic I snapped of my husband reading Blueberries for Sal to my daughter.

Haircuts

2012-01-01T09:14:00.001-05:00

My brother-in-law is a barber and he gave my son a new haircut. It isn’t his first haircut but this was his most dramatic one. When he walked in the door (my husband took him), I couldn’t believe how different he looked! He looked like a whole new kid.

Seeing her brother’s hair cut, I decided to give Anabel her first real haircut. She has had her bangs trimmed already but not the back. It took Anabel a long time to grow the hair she has so we have just let it go but I thought it would look a lot neater with a more “even” haircut.

1/2 of First School Year

2011-12-25T23:53:00.001-05:00

I guess the title is misleading since Anabel did not start school at the beginning of the school year. She started about 6 weeks late. The picture is of she and I on “Crazy Sock Day” at our school. It is her winter break now, so that means she is at the half way point during the school year. This post is more for “my diary” than anything else.

It has been great for her. She loves it wholeheartedly. She had been wanting to go to school for a while because I would sometimes go and pick up my niece from school. Anabel would look longingly out the car window until she spotted her cousin. Then when her cousin got in the car, she would ask her about a hundred questions about school. Then she would always inevitably ask me when it was her turn. I signed her up for school the same day that I got hired on to be a teacher at the same school. As we were filling out paperwork, she excitedly waited. Then when we got back into the car, she was upset because she thought that she was going to get to stay there. Just to see what she would say, we asked her about her friends and teacher at school (of course, she hadn’t met them yet). She told me that her teacher’s name was Allie and that she had friends named Shee-shoo, Rarie, and Neeno (of course, this is from the same girl who has an imaginary friend named Frick).

On the following Monday, I took her to her classroom to meet her teacher, Ms. H. I told her that we were not going to stay the whole day, we were just visiting but that she would get to go back and stay the next day. She held my hand as we walked in. The kids were doing free choice center time. The center closest to the door is the dramatic play area (house). There were two little girls playing in that area and they turned around and started saying, “oh she’s soo cute, she’s so cute!” Ms. H introduced her to them and she immediately started playing with them. The class is open to 3 and 4 year olds, but Anabel is the only 3 year old. Also, she is small for her age (is only 29 pounds…her 1 1/2 year old brother is 26 pounds to give you an idea). So she was the smallest one in the class. Ms.H pointed out that the other girls immediately were trying to “mother” her. (And as an update, her teacher told me that it is still somewhat true because she likes to partner one of her active boys up with Anabel when they are walking to and from the classroom because he is so gentle with her). We stayed and visited and got acquainted.

The next day we dropped her off for her first full day without Mommy and she was happy as can be. She has never had a tearful goodbye. She is always excited to go to school and then to come home and tell us all about it. On one of the first few days, her teacher told me that she can’t believe how verbal Anabel is. Then I got to tell her about all of the details that Anabel comes home and shares with us about her day. Her teacher was laughing and saying, “oh I did say that yesterday!” and “that is what happened!”

I thought that she was always loved pretend play, but it really just skyrocketed after she started school. I saw the influence of other children’s pretend play (such as unicorns and dragons) that she hadn’t done before starting. But the main thing she pretends at home is to be her teacher Ms. H. I remember after her first day she came home and pretended to hand out milk cartons to all of her toys, saying, “a milk for you, a milk for you, a milk for you”. She is constantly finding a piece of paper and a pencil and coming over to us and then asking us what we want for breakfast and lunch. She gives us the options and then asks us what kind of milk we want. That is what her teacher does everyday at the beginning of the day.

One day, she came home with some papers stapled together on one side. I incorrectly guessed that she had made a book and she said, “no Mommy, its a schedule!” I said “Oh” like I was so silly to have made that mistake. The next day, her teacher asked me if she had shown me her schedule. After I said yes, she explained that they have a flipchart schedule in the classroom that is turned as they progress throughout the day. During free time one day, she drew on some papers and asked her teacher to help her staple the sides of her “schedule”. Then she kept it with her all day and she turned her schedule all day as the classroom schedule was turned.

They do a letter of the week curriculum and Anabel already knows her letters, but she is starting to read by sounding out simple words. She is obsessed with trying to figure out what words are by looking at them. For example, a Christmas present to her Abuelo (grandpa) was correctly spelled. It is pronounced “ah-bwell-oh” but it does sound a bit like “ah-well-oh”. She repeatedly told me that it was not right because there is no “buh” sound in Abuelo. I insisted that there is and she said, no Mommy, sound it out “ahhh--that’s an O, wuh---that’s a W, its supposed to be o-w”.

She is one of 9 kids in her class. She comes home and tells me which kids make bad choices. I ask her if she makes bad choices and she makes a serious face and says, “no Mommy”. It’s the worst insult to her now. The first time we realized that was when my husband jokingly told her, “that’s a bad choice” and put his thumb down after she threw a ball in the air. She immediately busted out crying. We have now found those words are only to be used with an actual serious offense.

Anabel ALWAYS wants to be the door holder now at home. If I hold open the door, she says, “no you are the mommy, I am the door holder. If you want you can be the calendar helper”. If for some reason, I hold open the door anyways, she makes sure to tell her dad that I took her job.

They Said It

2011-12-25T23:01:00.001-05:00

One of my new year’s resolution is to blog once a week, even if it is just a “they said it” post. My kids have said so many funny things that I haven’t written down! Here are a couple that I can think of right now:

*One day as we were going to school, we got behind a school bus.

Anabel: Mommy, why don’t I ride a bus.

Me: I drive you because we go to the same place.

Anabel: Oh, why don’t their mommies drive them to school?

Me: Well, they probably have lots of reasons. Some go to work early….

Anabel: And some of the Mommies need a break…

Me (lol): Well maybe some of them need a break. But there are lots of reasons. Some people don’t have a car…

Anabel: Oh, so they need to take a break so they can cry because they don’t have a car?

*One day Anabel was laying on the bed and her brother was walking all around her. She yells, “Daddy, Daddy, he’s marching all around me!!” For some reason, my husband thought this was extremely hilarious.

*I asked Anabel what she wanted for Christmas, she said, “um band-aids”. And yes, she did get some in her stocking!

*Anabel’s favorite phrase lately has been, “Oh I know that”. If she asks a question and I tell her the answer, she will then say, “oh I know that”. Or if I have to get on to her for something she will always say, “oh I know that”.

*Roman is really starting to talk now. He loves to point out the moon (something Anabel also loved to do). One time when there was no moon out, he exasperatedly said, “there’s no moon!” with his hands out. It was so cute that sometimes when we are indoors, I will ask him where the moon is just to see him do it again. But I think he is tired of being on display because lately he has been choosing to ignore me when I ask him that.

*When Roman wants my attention he will yell, “mommy atch! mommy atch!” (watch with out the w sound).

*Back in October we went to a Children’s museum and I remember that after he stuck a peg in a hole he excitedly yelled, “I did it!” for the first time. He has said it many many times since then. Its sooo cute! Another favorite sentence of his is, “I see you!” as he is peeking out from behind something.

3 Dimensional Shapes Game

2011-12-22T17:20:00.001-05:00

3 Dimensional Shape Game

I have been teaching kindergarten this year and I thought that I might share some of the resources that I have made for my classroom!

The kids really respond to games and I love how my “lower” kids will try so hard so they can join in the fun and even if they don’t get it, their friends are always so ready to help them out! We play Number Sparkle and Around the World a lot, but the problem is that I have one really advanced kid who always beats everyone else. So I am trying to come up with games were that isn’t an issue.

In math, we are learning about 3 dimensional shapes (cube, cylinder, cone, and sphere). To play the game, you need a sphere (a ball) and the cards that I made. I am sure you can play the game without the cards as well.

This game is played after the children have already been introduced to the 3 dimensional shapes. In my class, we made bubble maps for each of the shapes, with the children giving me examples. For example, they offered party hat, teepee, air freshener (the cone ones), traffic cone, volcano, and ice cream cone for the cone shape. They made a few mistakes like pyramid, but it was a great way to get them really thinking about it. We did two shapes a day. Then I reviewed it with them by passing out 3 dimensional shape blocks and then calling out something (such as a box or a party hat) and they had to raise that block in the air. From a glance, I could tell who was getting it and who was looking around to see what everyone else was doing before responding.

Well back to the game. One student starts with the sphere and then rolls it to another student. Then I draw the shape card and tell them what shape it is. That student has to give me an example of that shape. If he gets it right then he gets to keep the card and then he rolls the sphere to another student. If he doesn’t get it right there is no penalty, he just rolls the sphere to someone else. The sphere has to be rolled to someone who doesn’t have a card, that way everyone gets a chance and some get a second chance. It’s a pretty quick game.

We have also made a cylinder necklace (ziti noodles on a yarn string) and a cone party hat.

Cake Decorating

2011-09-27T09:39:00.001-04:00

While I was decorating some cakes for my cousin’s birthday party, Anabel sat watching intently. Then she wanted to decorate one of the cupcakes she had made. I can’t believe how closely she imitated me!!!! She held the bag the same way, she released it the same way. She just learned by watching, I didn’t “show” her how to do it at all. Its amazing what these little ones can pick up from observing.

I really wish these photos would have came out better. Oh and a funny thing she said. The party was a Curious George theme, so I had a Curious George book open. I was using a star tip to decorate it. Anabel asked me, “Mom, why you making it all drip-drops?” and I said, “because its his fur” and then she looked at the book and said, “Mom, his fur is not drip-drops in here!” lol

By the way, these are the cakes that I decorated. Like I said, it was a Curious George theme, so I made a monkey face, and a big yellow hat (for The Man in the Yellow Hat, of course). I didn’t add the candles on it, that was the mommy of the birthday boy.

Pre-K

2011-09-27T09:18:00.001-04:00

I know these pics are basically the same, but in the first one, you can see what Anabel had written clearly, and in the second one, you get a better shot of her face. I am starting a new tradition where she will write her name on a piece of paper then on the first day of school each year, I will take a pic of her holding it. So, not only will I see her first day of school pics, I will also get to see the progression of her handwriting skills. As you can see, at 3 years old, she can write all the letters in her name but she doesn’t write them in the right order. This time she wrote “e l b a n A”

I am going to work full time as a teacher now and Anabel is starting the preschool at my school. Her classroom is just a couple doors down from me!

I took her to see her classroom and meet her teacher before the first day. Since it is September, school is already in session, so she is a new student. But when we walked in, two little girls started exclaiming “oh she’s so cute, she’s so cute!” And they gave her a big hug. Anabel is not shy at all, so she immediately started playing with them. She is tiny for her age, so she is smaller than the other girls, so I think they think she is a baby!

Candyland

2011-09-06T20:32:00.001-04:00

We played Candyland with Anabel one day after Roman went to sleep. I’ve had the game since around the time she was born because one of our tenants had moved out of the house we rent out and they had left it behind. I should have tried to play with her before. She loved it and understood how to play it just fine. Then another day, she played with my grandma and was having a good time until my grandma drew an ice cream card and she went back to that spot. But Anabel wanted to go (even though she hadn’t pulled the card because it wasn’t her turn) and my grandma told her no that she wasn’t supposed to go there (it would have led her back instead of forward). So Anabel put on a big pouty face and was trying as hard as she could not to cry. My grandma said, “its okay, you don’t have to get sad” and then Anabel couldn’t hold it in anymore so she let it all out and started crying. My grandma gave in and they switched spots (which made my grandma in the lead). Anabel wiped her eyes and started laughing and they went back to playing “the right way”. Every so often, she would make her man dance around and then she would say, “say ‘stop it Anabel’, say ‘stop dancing’” so my grandma would tell her what she wanted to hear and then Anabel would make it stop dancing. She’s a funny girl sometimes.

Pasta in the Sensory Tub

2011-08-26T09:27:00.000-04:00

I was cleaning out the cupboards and I realized we had some partially full boxes of pasta. I decided to let the kids have some fun with them by putting them in the sensory tub. As you can see, Roman was not good about keeping it in the tub as Anabel was. Anabel liked to turn the lasagna noodles into slides. Roman liked to scoop up the smaller pasta and dump it out!

Cultural Exchange: India

2011-08-25T18:29:00.001-04:00

We were very excited to receive the second package of our cultural exchange from India! Of course, Anabel was quick to notice the colorful wrapping of candy. She enjoyed tasting the mango flavored candy as she learned that mango is the national fruit of India. Mango is a very popular flavor in Mexico so we love mangos in our house as well.

The above pic is Anabel enjoying a mango when she was around 5 months old. Just thought I would throw that in there because I just remember how crazy she always was about mangoes. And her brother is too!

Anabel got to wear a Rakhi bracelet, which we learned is given during a celebration called Raksha Bandhan. It is supposed to protect the wearer from evil. Again, I am reminded of Mexican culture, as babies are often given bracelets to protect from mal de ojo or “evil eye”.

A coloring page was included and Anabel was quick to color it. Some other things that were included in the package were a small Indian flag, some rice, a packet of bindhi, and an Indian coin. A letter was included and it gave us a lot of information. I have to admit that I didn’t know that much about India and I am happy to learn along with Anabel. Just like the Canada package we received, she is really interested in having friends in different countries. She loves looking at their pictures and is possessive of them, saying that they are “her friends and not Roman’s friends”. But I pointed out that her friends have little siblings which are Roman’s friend. Anabel agreed :). Oh, and there was a picture of a tiger in the letter and Anabel did not want to look at it, she wanted me to turn the page. She doesn’t like tigers or lions.

I purchased the Around the World toob but I am not going to give her all of the landmarks at once. I gave her the first one, the Taj Mahal and she put it on India on our shower curtain map. India has caught her eye once before, since it is a peninsula like Florida, she had excitedly said, “Look another Florida!”

I really loved this package because we both learned a lot and we now have some things to add to our Asia box in the continent boxes that I am working on!

Wizard of Oz Preschool Pack and Puzzle

2011-08-24T08:39:00.000-04:00

As luck would have it, a couple days before we went to see The Wizard of Oz play (you can read about all the funny things she said here), I came across Homeschool Creations’ The Wizard of Oz preschool pack. Isn’t it weird how things work out like that? I keep having the urge to type “the wizard of the oz” cuz that’s what Anabel calls it lol.

I printed out some of the pages that I thought we would like. The biggest hit by far are the puppets. We put them on craft sticks and have been having lots of fun with them, even more so since we went to see the play.

Another thing we used out of the preschool pack was the “Color Scarecrow’s Shirt” page. Anabel colored all of the shirts according to the color indicated. She was able to do this independently because the color words were written in that color. So she knew when she was supposed to color the scarecrow’s shirt blue because the word blue was written in blue, not because she can read color words yet. She tried to trace over the words, but they were too small for her. She can trace over letters that I write with highlighters if they are written big. Then I folded the pages in four (first vertically and then horizontally) and then she cut along the lines ALL BY HERSELF! My little girl is growing up too fast! She cuts things up with scissors all of the time but I haven’t had her try to cut along the lines of anything yet. One reason is that she is left handed and I have yet to buy her left handed scissors yet. But she did really well. She also stapled the sheets together by herself, I just watched closely to make sure that she didn’t accidently staple her little fingers. I turned it into an emergent reader by writing the sentence “This scarecrow’s shirt is blue” etc. on each page, reading the words out loud as I wrote them and spelling the color words out loud. She “reads” it all by herself.

The last activity that we did was the graphing activity. She rolled a die that had the characters on it and then she graphed which one the die landed on.

She also put together a 12 piece Wizard of Oz puzzle that I bought from the Family Dollar for $1. I think its time to move on to some more complicated puzzles, she did this one easily!

Glitter Bottles on the Light Box

2011-08-23T08:33:00.000-04:00

I filled up some small water bottles with glitter to use on the light box. Roman was more interested than Anabel was. He slid them back and forth over the box.

Glow Sticks in the Bathtub

2011-08-22T18:24:00.001-04:00

If you want to now how to spend a dollar and entertain your children for the longest time, I will tell you. Put them in the bathtub with glow sticks. Both of my kids loved playing with them! I turned the light off in the bathroom and just turned on the hallway light. The bathroom was dim but not completely dark. They put the sticks under the water; turned them into drum sticks; turned them into magic wands and a bunch of other things! I got this idea from Play at Home Mom.

Funny Frank and “Chicks Can’t Swim”

2011-08-21T11:15:00.001-04:00

A chapter book that we recently read was Funny Frank by Dick King-Smith (he is the author of Babe The Gallant Pig). The book is about a chick who wants to swim but of course, chicks can’t swim. When we first started reading it, Anabel could not understand why the ducks wouldn’t let the chick swim with them. I told her that chicks can’t swim and she said, “oh Frank can’t swim yet, he has to wait until he gets bigger”. So I explained to her that even when a chick grows up to be a chicken, they still can’t swim.

Anabel has had experience with chickens because my mother-in-law (her abuela) raises them and she is always trying to catch one. But I guess we have never pointed out that they can’t swim.

I also went to pick a couple of picture books from the library. I am sure there are many other books that would go along, but these are the ones that I found that day.

The first book The Chick and The Duckling is about a chick that wants to copy everything that a duck is doing, from catching butterflies to swimming…but wait…chicks can’t swim! It has minimal text, only a few words per page.

The second book Whose Chick Are You? is about a little chick that has hatched and nobody knows who it belongs to…not the chicken, duck, goose, or bird. But the swan knows!

We also repeated this experiment to demonstrate how webbed feet helps animals like ducks and frogs swim. She places a plastic bag over her hand and then moves it around in a bucket of water. I had her make her hand like a chicken claw and she saw that she couldn’t displace any water.

I am linking this up to What My Child is Reading

Sing a Song of Sixpence

2011-08-21T10:50:00.001-04:00

My son’s favorite book is Happy Mother Goose and his favorite rhyme in it is “Sing a Song of Sixpence” so I made a little theme for it.

Sing a Song of Sixpence

A pocket full of rye

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie

When the pie was opened

The birds began to sing

Wasn’t that a dainty dish

To set before the king

We made some “birds baked in a pie”.

My kids helped with every stage of the pie. My son is not good at taking turns yet! lol

We used a bird cookie cutter to cut out some bird shapes for the pie.

For lunch we had a “Sing a Song of Sixpence” themed lunch. A sandwich on rye bread and a bird pie.

Franklin is Canadian

2011-08-20T10:28:00.001-04:00

I guess Franklin isn’t as popular as some of the other cartoons that are out there, because when I google him I don’t get that much! A benefit of this is that when we go to a store, we are not bombarded with hundreds of Franklin products that my daughter wants to buy. Anyway, as I was googling my little heart out, I discovered that Franklin is from Canada! I guess I always thought he was from a northern state because of the characters (beaver, moose, and goose). I would love to buy this Franklin doll with him wearing a Canada jersey, but for $115 (!!!) that’s a little too expensive for me lol.

Arthur Sandwich

2011-08-19T11:13:00.001-04:00

I decided to surprise Anabel with an Arthur sandwich. I was planning on using melted chocolate to draw on the lines on his face, but I realized we didn’t have any so I made due with some peanut butter. I told Anabel to cover her eyes and don’t peek and then I gave her the sandwich. She gasped and said, “Arthur!” and then she immediately ate the eyes off. She just recently has been allowed to eat raisins and she LOVES them. Then she asked me if I could make her a Buster sandwich lol. I told her I would but I have to wait until I buy some white bread.

The current Arthur book we are reading is about Arthur having a sleepover in a tent with his friends. But is that an alien they see? hmmmm

Franklin and Arthur Books

2011-08-18T21:46:00.001-04:00

Our library bag has been full of Franklin and Arthur books for weeks now. Well Franklin is nothing new, she has been a huge Franklin fan ever since we read our first Franklin book in December. Every time we go to the library, she has to get a Franklin book. Well right next to the Franklin books, she discovered Arthur books. And she has became hooked! Her favorite character is D.W. and she is also has her own books as well. After Anabel gets a Franklin and an Arthur (or D.W.) book, she’s ready to leave the library. I’ll ask her, “do you want to pick out another book?” and she will say, “No, I already have an Arthur book”. I know Arthur is a cartoon, but we haven’t watched any episodes of it yet, but we have watched plenty of Franklin episodes!

I made Anabel some Franklin bows and she is crazy over them. I am working on some other book themed bows for Anabel’s Christmas gift (I know its kind of early to think about Christmas…but I am lol).

I’m linking this up to What My Child is Reading

She Said It and Cute Cowboy Pics

2011-08-16T22:01:00.001-04:00

*We finished reading The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl and she said, “Aw I don’t want it to be over! What happens next?”

*Anabel always gets jealous if she sees her daddy and I being affectionate. If we are hugging she will cross her hands and pout and say, ”Nobody wants to hug me” but she will smile really big if we let her in the hug. One time, we did a big family hug and she said, “I’m the best girl in the WHOLE live world” lol.

*I asked her if she loves her brother and she says, “yes, sure, I guess so, that’s why I hug him”

Cultural Exchange: Mexico (Me!)

2011-08-15T10:44:00.001-04:00

I am participating in a cultural exchange hosted by Chasing Cheerios. By the time that I had heard about it, she was requesting no more people from USA, but I was able to join to represent Mexico.

A list of what I included in the package (as well as a list of everything in the package, explaining its significance):

1. Letter about Anabel

2. Mexican Flag

3. Small Toy Maraca

4. Virgin Mary Stickers*

5. Rosary*

6. Atole Mix

7. Artificial Poinsettia Flower

8. Legend of the Poinsettia Card*

9. Spanish Word Flashcards

10. Map of Mexico

11. Mexican Candy

12. Mexican Coin

13. Photo of Benito Juarez

14. CD of Spanish Songs

15. Decorate Your Own Calavera

16. Skull Ring

17. Wooden Butterfly

18. Recipe for Mexican Corn

I also included this special note: Mexico is a very religious country with over 80 percent considered to be Roman Catholic. There a few religious items included in the package to represent this major part of Mexican culture. It is your choice if you want to share these items with your children or not, but I have included descriptions of why these items are considered important to Mexican people.

Cultural Exchange: Canada

2011-08-14T19:54:00.001-04:00

I am participating in a cultural exchange organized by Chasing Cheerios. We received our first package from Canada! Anabel is very proud that she has a friend in Canada.

The contents of the package were a small Canadian flag; stickers of the Canadian flag and maple leaves; balloons with maple leaves on them; a Canada pencil, a flashlight that said Canada on it; a bracelet that said Canada; a postcard; Canadian money; stamps; candy; some pictures and a letter.

The kids were very excited to see what was in the package. Anabel immediately put on the bracelet and waved the flag everywhere.

I blew up the balloons for them and at first Anabel was too scared to take her hands off her ears because she thought her brother was going to pop his balloon (he eventually did!) but after a while she got over it and they were both chasing their balloons around the living room. I started playing “don’t let the balloon drop” and my kids were laughing hysterically! I used to play that all of the time when I was a kid but I don’t think I had played it with them yet.

We also located Canada on our shower curtain map but this pic was taken while she was still covering her ears lol. Candy was also included in the package and my daughter really loved enjoying that piece of Canada. My son is too small for hard candy so unfortunately he didn’t get to sample that :(. Some of the things will definitely be going into our North American continent boxes that I am working on.

I am linking this up to All Things Beautiful!

Playing with a Map and Flash Cards

2011-08-14T14:08:00.001-04:00

Anabel loves to help to help Mommy do things. I kind of take advantage of that to sneak in a little geography fun with her. I will lay out our shower curtain world map and take out our landmark flashcards (both bought at Target but I linked to some from Amazon below). As I am holding a picture of the Eiffel Tower, I will start looking really hard for something. She and her brother are already playing on the map at this point, they LOVE to climb all over it! Then she says, “what are you looking for Mommy?” and I show her the picture and say, “This is the Eiffel Tower and it is in France. I am looking for France on the map. I know its in Europe, so I am looking over here in Europe. Oh there it is, right here next to Spain. Can you lay this picture of the Eiffel Tower on France?” She is very excited to help Mommy do her work. We have been doing this lately because it doesn’t really require set up or clean up and I’ve been a little bit on the busy side. But I like it because she is seeing the pictures of the landmarks as I am labeling them and she is hearing the names of the countries. We only do about 4 cards at a time and then I put them back in the deck and shuffle them up, so we might get a new one or we might get a review the next time.

We also have Flags of the World flashcards (Target). I am starting to work on some continent boxes for my kids and I wanted to sort these flashcards into the different boxes but one side of the card will have Africa flags and the other side will have Europe flags, so I want to get another pack the next time I go to Target (I don’t live that close, I only get a chance to go when I am in that area). I bought a Flags of the Nations banner a while back (to get the free shipping at OT). They are very thin plastic. I pulled them apart one by one and had my husband and my cousin Alex guess what flag they were. None of us were that good at them! We easily got US, Mexico, Canada, UK, South Korea, Japan, and Italy; but there were some in there that really stumped us! I would flip through the flashcards until I found one that matched it. As I was sorting them and having everyone guess I was pointing out the places on the map to Anabel.

Winner For Craft Kit Giveaway

2011-08-14T09:36:00.001-04:00

Thank you to everyone who entered the Craft Kit Giveaway (it was my very first giveaway). The winner is comment 33 Domestic Diva!

Where I’m At and Quick Notes

2011-08-10T13:59:00.001-04:00

Well I’ve been absent from blogging for a few days and its going to be a few days more! I have a lot going on right now. I’m helping plan my cousin’s Sweet 15 birthday party, I’m working on my cultural exchange package, and reorganizing my house and working on a big surprise for Anabel. I even have like 5 posts that just have pictures and no words in there! I’ll get around to it eventually!

And some quick notes about Roman! My big boy is picking up some new words! He loves to say “uh-oh” all the time. He also says “thank you” which I think is cute because its one of the first words that my niece Alicia also learned to say. He says “cheese” both when we are taking a pic of him (or when he is pretending to take a pic) and also when he wants a piece of cheese. It comes out sounding like “chis” which is funny because its like he has a Spanish accent lol.

Fruit Rainbow

2011-08-05T08:44:00.001-04:00

On the day we went to see The Wizard of Oz play, we made a fruit platter in the shape of a rainbow. Anabel helped slice the bananas. I would have preferred pineapples for the yellow in the rainbow but I didn’t have any, so I went with bananas which are more of an off white than yellow without their peel.

Two Songs

2011-08-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

1. You Are My Sunshine. My older cousin Cecelia was born in April and her mom used to call her, “my April sunshine”. When my mom was pregnant with me, my cousin used to touch her belly and say “April sunshine”. I was also born in April and my mom decided to name me April. So then I became “little April sunshine” (yep, I just hijacked her nickname lol). So as I was growing up, my grandma would always sing You Are My Sunshine to me as a little girl. It is one of my earliest and fondest memories. When I had kids, I would always sing the same song to them and it would always sooth them.

2. Because You Loved Me by Celine Dion. It was my wedding song.

Three Films

2011-08-03T22:16:00.001-04:00

1. Fools Rush In I love romantic comedies, even if they are predictable and corny! My favorite of all time is Fools Rush In. I mentioned yesterday that I don’t like to read the same books or watch the same movies over and over. Whenever I watch a movie I have seen before, I always end up getting up to do something else, it just doesn’t keep my attention. But this is a movie that I have watched at least 5 times!

2. X-Men Trilogy (X-Men/ X2 - X-Men United/ X-Men - The Last Stand) There are two genres of movies that I DO NOT like…horror movies and action movies. Well, the X-Men movies are action movies and I love them (I know…I’m contradicting myself a lot). But, I think a little bit of that goes back to when I was a little girl and my cousins and I would act out both X-Men cartoons and Mortal Kombat movies.

3. Ever After - A Cinderella Story Another fav movie is the Drew Barrymore version of Ever After…swoon!

Island Model and Snack

2011-08-03T13:57:00.002-04:00

We have totally been done with our Hawaii theme for a couple of weeks now but I still had this post and one other to write. Using the sandy playdough, we made a mound in the middle of a large mixing bowl. Then Anabel surrounded it with water to make a model of an island. She continued to play with the little sea turtles.

I think this pic is quite funny, it looks like they are having a drag out fight, but really they weren’t. Roman had climbed up on the chair because he wants to be involved with EVERYTHING now. I thought they could break up the graham crackers together so I got ready to take a pic of the siblings working harmoniously together but then they started fighting over the roller just as I snapped it.

So I had to separate them on opposite sides of the table so that they could take turns crushing. We also found that the ice cream scoop worked out better than the roller. The crushed crackers are meant to be “sand”, luckily we had these on hand from when we made s’mores on the 4th of July.

She mixed blue food coloring with cream cheese to make water and then she spread it on a bagel. She made an island in the middle with the crushed up graham crackers, then she surrounded it with whale crackers. I pointed out that it is an island like Hawaii because it has water all around it. I also reminded her about the humpback whales that we learned about and how they swim in the waters around Hawaii. This snack is very similar to the pond snack we made recently.

Four Books

2011-08-02T13:30:00.001-04:00

There are so many good books that I have read. But I am not a person who re-reads books or re-watches movies (that much). I do it sometimes, but I am not that person who rereads their favorite book every year until the cover falls off or has seen a movie so many times that they know every line (of course I do both of these things with my kids…I know almost every line in Frog and Toad and Tangled). But here are four books that I love:

1. There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom by Louis Sachar. Remember how I said that I don’t re-read books? Well, I did….sometimes…when I was a kid. This was one of my favorite-est books when I younger. And I re-read it about 5 times, the last time being when I was probably 13 or so. And even though it was years ago, I could remember so many little details. Like one example, I remember that one of the character’s mother was cutting fish and that her arm was the size of fish. I remember that one of the characters made a list and asked if his head looked like a bowl of chili and his sister found it and told him that yes it did. One day last year, I was subbing for an elementary school librarian and I picked the book up and read it again during my lunch break. Those little details were still there and the rest of the story came flooding back to me. It is such a beautiful story about a boy who is misunderstood and just wants friends but becomes a bully instead. He has a counselor who understands him and he might get the chance to make his first friend ever.

I love the author, many of his other books were also favorites when I was a kid such as Sideways Stories from Wayside School. Those books crack me up still if I think about them…does that mean I have an immature sense of humor? Like I remember that they forgot to build the 13th floor so the elevator just goes from the 12th floor to the 14th floor. lol. And then there are 3 boys named Eric. Eric Bacon, Eric Fry, and Eric Bake (I think, its been years since I read them) but everyone always gets them confused. The author’s most popular book Holes is also a great book, I read that one for the first time as an adult a few years ago.

I could probably write paragraphs about all of the books I loved as a kid, but this is only supposed to be the 1 book and I’ve already written about a couple here….

2. Daughter of Fortune: A Novel (P.S.) by Isabel Allende. Allende is another favorite author and I have read almost all of her books. Daughter of Fortune is my favorite book of hers. It is about a woman from South America who goes off to California in search of her lover. It is set during the 1849 Gold Rush and she disguises herself as a man to protect herself. She finds a companion and they find love. That’s the simplest way to describe the plot, but like all Allende books, there are many different stories wove into one. The characters in this book are also tied to some of her other books. For example, the main character’s granddaughter is the heroine of another one of her books, Portrait in Sepia.

After reading so many of Allende’s books, I have started to get the feeling “that I’ve read this before”. The settings are always different but the characters seem similar. But I still like the books anyway and I enjoy reading each one.

3. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I read a lot of young adult books. I think after I read Harry Potter, I started checking out other books written for kids/teens. I didn’t read Harry Potter until about 4 years ago, even though I was a kid when the first book came out. So, its been pretty recent that I started reading this category of books. But for now I am hooked! I have even been reading a book related to each state study we have done (to myself, not to my daughter) and they have all been “kids” books. Anyway, back to number 3 on the list…The Hunger Games was a recent series of books that I read. I couldn’t put them down, although I was a little dissatisfied with the third book. The first book is set in the future where the government televises an event where kids and teens have to fight to the death until only one person is left standing. A movie version is expected to come out early next year!

4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I was required to read this during my senior year of high school but I am glad I did. The characters have always stuck with me and I have to watch every movie version of the book!

Wizard of Oz (hilarious)

2011-08-01T18:58:00.001-04:00

We went to see The Wizard of Oz play. The tickets were a little pricey so only Anabel and I went. She wore her own red slippers and was proudly showing them off. She is so funny, she had me cracking up with the funny things she said during the play. When she first saw Dorothy she said, “She’s not wearing her red shoes!” and then throughout the play she kept asking if she could go play with Dorothy. During the intermission, she thought it was over so she said she wanted to go. I told her, “its not over, don’t you want to see more of Dorothy?” and she said, “Yes! I want to see more Dorothys all over the place!” Then when the play resumed, there were other characters on the stage but not Dorothy. So she said, “Mom! Dorothy is not on this page!” I was laughing and I told her that she will come on later and she said, “Oh, when those people move out of the way?” She said that the Tin Man needed to put on some shorts because “nobody wants to see his underwear.” She was also very excited that Dorothy said her name! Dorothy said that her cousin Anabel was engaged and always singing love songs and the other characters asked Dorothy to sing like Anabel does. Anabel said, “Dorothy said my name. She wants me to go there with her” Anabel was playing close attention throughout the entire thing because she kept noticing things that I didn’t. Like one time, Toto wasn’t on the stage (maybe he was taking a potty break) and she noticed and asked where he was.

In the play, the Wicked Witch is thrown into a boiling pot of water and is shrunk until she disappears. Well, the actor that played the witch goes into a pot and is replaced by a little kid (about 4 years) wearing an identical costume. The kid/witch runs around the stage and then the characters put her in the boiling pot and then a small puppet pops up wearing a witch costume. Anabel does not understand what they did and so she was amazed by this. She said, “why she getting smaller?!?” with amazement. She asked me again later on in the day why the witch was getting smaller. Surprisingly, Anabel was not scared of the witch at all, she was a little scared of the Cowardly Lion though. When we went to see The Jungle Book play, she was a little scared of Sher Kan the tiger. I guess she doesn’t like the big cats. Driving home I asked her what her favorite part was and she said Dorothy was and then she said she didn’t like the lion. I said, “Dorothy was pretty, wasn’t she?” and she said, “yeah she is, but not the lion” Don’t worry, we were whispering and I always told her she needed be quiet so other people could hear, but the little comments that she did sneak in were so cute. We both really enjoyed going and I can’t wait until September when we are planning to see Snow White.

I am linking this up to Tiny Talk Tuesday

Five Foods

2011-08-01T10:49:00.001-04:00

1. My favorite food hands down is CHICKEN QUESADILLAS! I love them and I order them at whatever restaurant we go to. They are usually on the appetizer menu, but I order them as my meal. My two favorite places to eat quesadillas are Applebee’s and a local Mexican restaurant called Tapatios. I also love homemade ones as well.

2. Mexican Food. This is a category but there is so much to love that it is hard for me to narrow it down, some of my favs are flautas, tosadas, tortas, albondigas, tacos, enchiladas, carne asada, guacamole and tortillas. So much goodness. I also like tex-mex stuff like nachos. FYI, real Mexican food does not have cheddar cheese in it! Even if your local “authentic” Mexican restaurant serves it with cheddar cheese, that’s not how its made in Mexico :)

3. Black cherries. I love them so much, I can eat a whole bag on my own.

4. Pepsi. Okay, not a food but I have a horrible addiction to Pepsi. I know its bad for me but I can’t seem to give it up. Both times I was pregnant I was able to give it up cold turkey since caffeine is bad for the pregnancy but as soon as I gave birth to them (I mean like immediately after) I started drinking it again.

5. Spaghetti. When I was growing up, it was my favorite food, my aunt used to make it for my birthday every year.

Six Places

2011-08-01T10:32:00.001-04:00

I had a horrible virus this weekend, that I am still recovering from. So I am a little behind. I was supposed to post 6 places yesterday for the 10 day challenge…but oh well. I am listing 6 places that I would like to visit.

1. Mexico. My husband and I have both been to Mexico. I even lived there for a few months when I was 3, although my memories of it are a little hazy. But we have never been together and my children have never been. We are making sure that we go sometime within the next couple years.

2. Niagara Falls. I don’t know why but its always something that I would want to see.

3. Hawaii. Who wouldn’t want to visit there?

4. The Grand Canyon

5. England

6. Italy

I am not sure if we will get to see all of those places, but who knows?

Crafty Kits for Kids Giveaway!

2011-08-01T10:21:00.001-04:00

This is a giveaway event going on with over 14 participating blogs, each one giving out their own crafty kit. Make sure you visit all of the blogs and enter!

I am giving away a RAINBOW FUN KIT! The kit includes the materials for over 8 rainbow inspired activities, with step by step directions as well book suggestions and songs. Its a whole rainbow theme! Check out some of the rainbow activities that I did with my daughter a few months ago to get an idea of some of the things we did!

To win all you have to do is leave a comment saying that you would like to win. Leave another comment saying you are a follower and you get another chance to win!

Open to anyone, world wide! Giveaway ends August 13th at 11:59pm. Winner will be drawn by random.org and announced on this blog as well as emailed. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn. Email address must be in at least one comment or visible on your profile to win.

Visit all of the other blogs for a chance to win!

Seven Wants

2011-07-30T14:20:00.001-04:00

I decided to write this as seven wants that I want for my children. Maybe one day they will read it when they are older, but I hope that I instill this along the way :).

1. I want my kids to be the type to help others out when they need it. I know that my husband and his dad have always been known as this type, people are always telling me that they know they can count on them when they need them. It makes me really proud when I hear that, so I hope that my children have this reputation as well.

2. I want my kids to be lifelong learners. I hope that they think learning is cool as they are growing up and are proud to be smart. Nerds are cool too! I was always happy to learn and go to school, so I hope they inherit that from me. I also hope that they learn things for the sake of learning not just for good grades. I want them to have knowledge for the sake of knowledge, and I hope that it doesn’t stop when they graduate.

3. I want them to be kind to everyone, even people who are different from them or have different ideas or beliefs from them. Every human deserves respect. Again, this is a trait that their dad definitely has that I hope they absorb from him.

4. I want my kids to be satisfied with the lives they live. I want them to have lives and careers that make them happy. I want them to be happy with the life that they have rather than being one of those people who are always thinking of what they don’t have or what they are missing out on.

5. I want them to have loving and healthy relationships, with both their partners and with other friends and families.

6. I want them to have long and healthy lives.

7. I want them to be conscious of how they spend their money. I see too many people trying to live out of their means. I really hope that they don’t live a stressful life full of debt. That kind of goes with #4, I want them to be satisfied with what they can afford rather than trying to buy what they cant.

Disney World

2011-07-29T23:15:00.001-04:00

We went to the Magic Kingdom in Disney World this week. My husband has lived in Florida almost his whole life but this was his first time going. His sister and brother went along with us and it was also their first time too (their parents aren’t the type to go to theme parks). I went a few times when I was a teenager.

We made a mistake by making the first ride we went on the Snow White Adventure ride. Both the girls (my 4 year old niece went with us as well) did not like it.

After that they were nervous going on any of the indoor rides, even Winnie the Pooh. Anabel would cover her ears (she does that both when things are too loud and also when she is scared) until she got comfortable.

But she loved the outdoor rides such as the Teacup ride, the Dumbo ride, and the Magic Carpet ride.

We ate at a Pinocchio themed restaurant for lunch.

She threw a coin in a fountain.

The highlight of the day was her meeting Rapunzel. She was star struck, she was staring at her and couldn’t think of anything to say back to her in the few minutes that she met with her.

She also met Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. She doesn’t know who they are so she called them the pink princess and the blue princess. She kept rubbing her hands on Sleeping Beauty’s dress. A funny thing that happened was that she was holding her cousin’s Rapunzel doll and when she went up to meet Cinderella, I told her that I would hold the doll because I didn’t want Cinderella to get jealous. Well afterwards, Anabel was saying, “the blue princess was jealous!”

We also met Mickey but Anabel wouldn’t go anywhere near him unless her Daddy was holding her. She is not a fan of costumed characters (but I guess princesses aren’t in that category to her).

She got to see two parades, she was excited to see Woody and Jesse in both parades.

Eight Fears

2011-07-29T08:52:00.001-04:00

1. My biggest all time fear is that my husband or I will pass away before my children are grown. I know it could happen, but its irrational the amount of time I worry about this. I really wish I could not think about it, but I often do. I just don’t want them to grow up without us!

2. My second fear is of my grandma passing away. She is not in the best health so I try to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable, but the thought of having to live the rest of my life without her makes me so sad. She is the only parent I really had, and I love her so much!

3. I have a fear of bad weather. Even thunderstorms put me on edge. I think its starting to rub off on my daughter a little bit so I try to hide it but when the weather is really bad, I stay tuned to the weather updates on tv.

4. I have a fear of telling people any problems I might be going through. I seem to keep my troubles to myself (I talk to my husband a lot though, he is my best friend!).

5. Car accidents…especially during #3 and probably because of #1.

6. Cockroaches…well I guess its not really a fear, but they really give me the heebie-jeebies…especially those huge ones that we get in FL.

7. Giant squid and whirlpools. I had two recurring nightmares involving both of those things when I was a kid and I think they are sooo scary. I’ve never seen either in real life and that’s a good thing! My imagination is horrifying enough!

8. Child predators. Too many horror stories out there of abused children, it makes me worry about who my babies come in contact with.

My Boy in Action

2011-07-28T13:59:00.001-04:00

Almost all the pics I get of my son are blurry. He is a boy on the go from the time he wakes up until the time he goes to sleep. He is very energetic and always testing the limits. My grandma likes to joke that if I would have had Roman first, I wouldn’t have had another child so soon (he was born 22 months after his sister). He can be handful sometimes, but I love him just the way he is! In the above pics he is playing with the shopping cart that his sister received for Christmas last year. It is one of his favorite toys and he will play with it for the longest time. He loves to stop and put some toys or books in the basket and then push it around the kitchen and living room for while before switching out the toys and starting all over again.

He cannot stand to have his diaper on, he takes it off at least 5 times a day! He is getting really quick at it now. He just takes off one tab and then pulls the rest down around his legs. Then he runs away from me before I can put it back on. I let him run around barebottomed sometime just to make him happy but it doesn’t make me happy to have to clean up the “messes” me inevitably makes.

He is very squeamish for a boy. He does not like bugs or small furry animals. Anabel has always been willing to get up close and personal with creatures, but Roman will try to stay as far away as possible and will shiver if he gets near them. Just yesterday, he was screaming like he was hurt and so I ran over to him. He was frozen and screaming and wouldn’t move because a foot in front of him was a large beetle. My husband rescued him. We saw a bird in a cage recently and he almost climbed over my shoulder to stay away from it.

When it comes to climbing though, he is fearless. At 13 months old, he can climb up a slide all on his own (see video) and he can climb on to the kitchen table. It drives me nuts!! He thinks he can already jump. It is the cutest thing ever. He bends down to almost a 90 degree angle with his arms back (for momentum) and then he “jumps” up and says “ugh”. He actually only succeeds in standing on his tippy toes…but I won’t point it out to him if you don’t. He makes his own obstacle courses with the couch cushions. He arranges them so that he can “jump” off of them. I can’t believe how close he is to actually jumping though.

He says a few words. One night, he was saying “ay paw, ay paw” over and over. I thought he might be trying to say April (my name) and my husband thought he might be trying to say apple. But then I figured out that he was saying iPod as he was trying to get my husband’s iPod. He is obsessed with cell phones and iPods. He also says “ten” whenever he gives you something or you give him something (“ten” is like “take it” or “here you go” in Spanish).

He is still a biter, but thankfully it has calmed down a lot. He only does it when he is trying to fight with his sister, which is still not good, but he used to bite all the time, whether he was angry or not!

He loves me reading him books. He has had the same favs for a while now. He likes a mother goose book and Brown Bear Brown Bear the most.

Roman is still such a mama’s boy, sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and will not be comforted by his dad, all he wants is me. When I pat him and reassure him that I am there, he will go back to sleep.

He loves to shake his head no. Anabel always asks him questions and he always says no. Before her birthday, she would tell him she is going to Disney World and he would shake his head no and then she would get upset lol. As if he had a say in the matter.

Nine Loves

2011-07-28T09:28:00.001-04:00

I was going to list some favorite foods but I will save that for “five food” days. I purposely used the word “love” more times then necessary.

1. Of course, my greatest love is my family. I love my children, my husband and my grandma with everything that I have. I live my entire life for them.

2. Reading! I just love losing myself in a good book, where I feel like I am a part of that world and then get sad when the book is over. Where I lose sleep just so I can read a few more chapters. I love that.

3. I love making things. I just love when I come up with an idea and have to come up ways to make it come to life. I love the satisfied feeling I feel when it all comes together.

4. Taking my kids places. Our budget isn’t very big so we often have to go places close to home, but since we live in FL that isn’t such a bad deal :)

5. I love planning themes or parties. I always have more ideas then are possible (either due to budget or time constraints).

6. I love blogging. I love looking back on all the stuff I have done with my kids, the little updates I make and the cute stuff I recorded. I love reading other’s blogs and watching their children grow up through pictures and getting great ideas. I love emailing back and forth to other people.

7. Singing songs. I love to sing loudly. I love to sing along to the radio. I’m always singing with my kids, even in the grocery store. No, I can’t sing. My daughter has absorbed this trait as well.

8. I love family get togethers, like cookouts.

9. Sitting outside with my husband. We do this on most nights, we watch the kids play and just talk about our days.

Ten Secrets

2011-07-27T20:10:00.001-04:00

I decided to do this 10 Day Challenge that I saw on the blog Life in Lusaka.

1. I always wanted to be a writer when I grew up, but I doubt that will ever happen since I never actually write anything!

2. Sometimes I feel self-conscious about not having a full time job.

3. I have trust issues so I don’t feel like I can talk about personal problems with very many people.

4. I’m so jealous of people with siblings. I have soo many cousins, many that I grew up in the same house as, but I still wish I had a brother or a sister.

5. I don’t like my mom. I was raised by my grandma and have had a very difficult relationship with my mom.

6. I worry constantly about things that will probably never happen.

7. I think about cave people a lot. I don’t know why, but I do. I always wonder what their life was like.

8. I mostly read young adult and middle grade fiction for fun. Yep, kids books!

9. I have tics (the fidgety kind…not the bug kid---tics not ticks!). If you know me in real life that is not a secret at all but in the blog world it is! People are always asking me if I am cold or if I am okay because of my tics. The one I do the most is moving my shoulders as if I am shrugging. The harder I try to control them the worse they get. You should see my wedding video!

10. I grew up poor (my American standards of course).

Those are my ten “secrets”…tomorrow I will post my 9 loves!

Packing Peanuts

2011-07-27T08:54:00.001-04:00

Anabel received a birthday present in the mail from my mom. She was going crazy trying to figure out what it was (it was a scooter), she guessed it was a mermaid. I think that is because recently I was showing a post to husband where someone had made a mermaid for a birthday gift. She had snuck a peak, so I think she heard me say birthday and assumed I was talking about a gift for her. Anyway, the package came with a large amount of packing peanuts.

I poured some of them into a container for a sensory tub for my kids. Then I hid some small colored cars (my mom included those in the package for Roman) and had the kids find them and then identified the color. Roman wanted to throw the peanuts on the floor and I found that by adding another container, it helped eliminate most of that because he busied himself with transferring them.

Then I had Anabel guess what would happen if we added water to the tub. She guessed that they would get wet! So we poured some water in and watched them dissolve. I asked her what it felt like and she said that they felt like mushrooms (lol, I think she meant mushy).

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY A CHOKING HAZARD SO IT WAS COMPLETELY SUPERVISED.

3 Year Old Update

2011-07-26T21:37:00.001-04:00

I really can’t believe that my little sweet baby is now 3 years old! Where did the time go?!? In one way, it feels like we just brought her home from the hospital a few months ago, in another way it feels like I can barely remember what life was like before her.

Note to self: take posed pictures on her birthdays, looking through them I realize that they are all action shots and its hard for me to find a pic where she is looking at the camera. The above pics are all of her four birthdays (including her actual “birth day” in the very first pic).

We adore our little girl. Throughout her whole life, I have felt like if somehow I could have created my ideal daughter, she would have been exactly like Anabel. I love everything about her.

She has always been a daddy’s girl and still is, but we have noticed that she is becoming more attached to me and will often choose to follow me around over her dad (which is a recent development). But she still is crazy about him, he is always the first person she will paint a picture for and he is the only one that gets to tuck her in at night. She always wants him to “roll her like a taco” before bedtime. Sometimes, in the day she will make a pouty face and just tell me that she misses her daddy. He always takes her on all of his errands, now when he is leaving, she just assumes she is going with him. Of course, he is the “fun” parent, by that I mean, she always gets a small treat when she goes with him.

Anabel does not like to see us upset or mad. If we seem to be at all, she will ask, “are you mad or glad?” And if she thinks we are upset then she will ask us if we want her to sing her “ABCDs” to make us feel better. If she is upset, sometimes she will tell me, “singing will make me feel better” and so I will sing her a song. You don’t know how happy it makes me to know that my horrible singing is a comfort to my little girl. She loves to sing and dance. Her favorite song to sing is “I’ve been working on the railroad”.

She has now and always been a book lover. Her current favorite books are Frog and Toad series by Arnold Lobel. She has a big imagination and loves to act out books, something I am very happy that she does.

I admit she has lots of toys, her current favorites are a mommy and baby orca (plastic figurine animals) and any dolls that have hair that she can brush. She also loves riding her tricycle and swinging on the swing. She also likes to paint, she prefers to paint over drawing.

Anabel is very friendly. She will always be the first to approach another child and start playing with them. She makes friends wherever she goes. She is not conscious of age yet, but she rarely tries to play with children younger than her, those are “Roman’s friends” as she says. But any kids her age or older she will play with. She absolutely loves playing with her cousin Alicia and our next door neighbor Jolie. But there are times when Anabel is a little bit bossy, especially to her little brother.

She is a good sister, she is always thinking of him. If she gets a snack or a treat, she ALWAYS asks for one for him too! If we go somewhere without Roman, it is not long before she is asking where he is at and saying that she wants him. They definitely fight like any siblings but I love their tender moments as well.

Anabel is sooo talkative, there are very few moments a day where she is not talking or asking questions. My husband says that I am getting a taste of my own medicine :). Even though she only turned 3 yesterday, she seriously already talks in paragraphs.

I love my little girl and I hope that I am the mommy that she deserves. She is so special and I am so blessed to call her my own.

3 Year Old Interview

2011-07-26T08:26:00.001-04:00

My babygirl’s actual birthday was yesterday! She is now 3 years old! I like to take periodic interviews of Anabel, asking her the same questions every time. This time, I had told her that I as going to ask her some questions and write down the answers. She dutifully sat down and answered the questions quickly and waited for the next one, no elaboration. I think the next time I do an interview with her, I will just ask her the questions randomly so that way I get more drawn out answers lol.

1. What do you like to eat?

I like to eat spaghetti.

2. Tell me about your mom.

My mommy plays.

3. Tell me about your dad.

My daddy likes to play games.

4. Tell me about your brother?

My brother fights.

5. What is your favorite book?

The…the…the ant and the snail.

6. What is your favorite movie?

Tangled is.

7. What is your favorite thing to do?

uh…wear shoes.

8. Who is your best friend?

Alicia

9. What do you want to be when you grow up?

I want to be a Capri-Sun for Halloween (that’s what she was for Halloween last year. So I rephrased it as, “when you get bigger what do you want to do?”) I want to buy some dragons.

10. Tell me a joke.

A joke needs me. I don’t know but the joke needs me.

3rd Birthday Party Highlights

2011-07-24T12:24:00.001-04:00

Anabel’s 3rd birthday party had a Tangled theme. I printed out a Wanted poster like the one from the movie and used it to take Wanted pictures of all the kids that came to the party. I just printed out a 8 x 11 page and cut out Flynn Rider’s face, then I glued it to corrugated cardboard. I attached a stick so the kids could hold on to it while I was snapping pics.

My cousin Cecelia surprised us by renting out a water slide for the party. It was her gift to Anabel.

The kids loved it so much that I know it won’t be the last time.

I made a tower cake for the birthday cake and I also made some Pascal cupcakes. I didn’t like the way they were coming out so I decided not to put anymore effort into them, I only made 7 of them (plus 2 more to hold up the pic of Pascal). I thought the cupcakes looked a little bit like the Grinch and my cousin thought they were Shrek babies. I used Dots for his eyes and I put the leftovers around the cupcakes.

I made some “magical golden flowers” by cutting flower shapes out of pineapple slices (using a cookie cutter) and little hearts out of watermelon. Like the Pascal cupcakes, I included a pic of the flower from the movie just so everyone would know what it is. I also made some Pascal blowers.

I put out a bowl of apples and included an image of Maximus (its his favorite food). I made little boats out of blue Jello and orange slices, but it was so hot that the Jello melted and the slices sunk to the bottom before anyone got a chance to eat them. And the final touch was a yellow yarn braid twisting throughout the table.

She has had the Rapunzel dress up for a few weeks now and I brought it for her to wear as she blew out the candles. It was an outdoor party and it was really windy so it was very hard to keep the three little candles lit for her to blow out!

She was very excited to open her presents, including the Frog and Toad boxed set. She was very excited to receive these! They are some of her favorite books, and she hates returning them to the library. Now she doesn’t have to!

She was also very excited to open the big box! It was a gift sent to by mom who is living in Michigan. It arrived about a week before her birthday and she has been dying to know what it was. It was a scooter!

And of course, they all got turns to hit the pinata (but some kids never came off the water slide! Not even for candy!)

Tangled Birthday Cake

2011-07-23T20:57:00.001-04:00

For Anabel’s 3rd birthday, I made her a Tangled theme cake. I got a lot of my inspiration from this cake. I have made all of my kids birthday cakes so far and I hope to continue to do so until they beg me to stop!

Anabel’s 1st birthday cake was a castle for a princess theme. It was my the first cake that I really tried to decorate, so don’t judge! lol. I made a Dora cake for her 2nd birthday.

Birthday Invitation

2011-07-22T12:31:00.001-04:00

Anabel LOVES birthday invitations. Whenever she gets one she will carry it around all day reading it. If it gets misplaced, she freaks out! She thinks she cannot attend the party if she no longer has the invitation even if I reassure her that we can still go without it. In the picture below, she had fell asleep with a Spongebob invitation she received from her friend Austin. Well for her 3rd birthday, we are taking her to Disney World. We are also having a small party with just her closest cousins (if we had it with all her cousins, then it would be a very large party). I let Anabel make the invitation to her party. It is going to have a Tangled theme so she used some Tangled stickers and stamps. She drew a tower (the long purple line), Rapunzel’s hair (a long yellow line that didn’t show up very well) and grass (the mountain looking lines in the middle). I asked her what she wanted me to write on the invitation and I wrote it, the only thing I added was the date and time. Here was our conversation:

Me: So what should we write on the invitation?

Her: Um..Rapunzel.

Me: Ok, but we should write your name too, so they know whose party it is.

Her: Ok, spell Anabel with a A. And spell “come to my party”

Me: Come to my party (reading it out loud as I wrote it)

Her: Now spell Maximus

Me: Maximus. Now we have to say where it is going to be at.

Her: At my abuela’s house

Me: Ok, and now I am going to write the date and time.

I just wanted to include the conversation since the wording on the invite was a little funny lol. All the guests know exactly where “abuela’s house” (abuela is Spanish for grandma) so there was no need for an address. Then we made a few photocopies and gave them out by hand. When the copies first came out, she tried to peel the stickers off of the copy hee hee. She didn’t want to give up the original invitation, she kept that one for herself.

Books and Other Rhythm Stick Activities

2011-07-21T13:28:00.001-04:00

We used the rhythm sticks I made to tap to Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Anabel tries really hard to copy me doing the beat and she almost gets it. I am considering buying the audio version of Brown Bear to go along with our music time. I am going to continue with this book for several more days and then I am going to introduce doing the rhythm sticks with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Any suggestions as to books with a good rhythm stick beat?

I made up a story to use with the rhythm sticks. It teaches the concepts of slow and fast.

Right outside my window, I hear a birdy tapping (tap your sticks together at a normal speed)

In the morning, he tapped slow (tap the sticks together slowly)

In the afternoon, he tapped them fast (tap the sticks together quickly)

In the evening, he fell asleep and didn’t tap at all (put the sticks at rest).

Right outside my window, I hear a grasshopper rubbing (rub the sides of the sticks together at a normal speed)

In the morning, he rubbed slow (rub the sticks together slowly)

In the afternoon, he rubbed them fast (rub the sticks together quickly)

In the evening, he fell asleep and didn’t rub at all (put the sticks at rest).

Right outside my window, I hear a builder hammering (hammer the sticks together at a normal speed*)

In the morning, he hammered slow (hammer the sticks together slowly)

In the afternoon, he hammered them fast (hammer the sticks together quickly)

In the evening, he fell asleep and didn’t hammer at all (put the sticks at rest).

*To hammer the sticks you put one stick perpendicular to the ground, and then hammer the top of that stick with the top of the other stick.

The book 101 Rhythm Instrument Activities also has a story about raindrops that we have been using.

We also used the rhythm sticks during movie time! One of Anabel’s favorite movies is Franklin and the Green Knight and in one part of the movie, Franklin and his friends start singing for spring to “wake up” and they use sticks to tap to the beat. So Anabel used her sticks to wake up spring as well. Right now as I am typing this, the song is stuck in my head. “Wake up! Spr-ing where are you? Wake up!”

I am linking this up to Tot School

Coffee Fun

2011-07-20T09:28:00.002-04:00

I made a coffee sensory tub for Anabel to play with. I included a molcajete (a mortar and pestle that my mother-in-law brought from Mexico) with coffee beans in it. Then a plastic container with coffee grounds. She tried to grind the beans but she gave up really easily saying it was too hard. I crushed the beans a little to show her how they are changed into grounds.

We made a cake where one of the ingredients is coffee! The cake is called One-Bowl Chocolate Cake and I got the recipe from Eating Well. The recipe didn’t make much cake but it was yummy and VERY moist. My son is always wanting to help out in the kitchen now (he always wants to do anything he sees his sister doing). So he helped pour some of the ingredients too. I never get many pics when I am doing stuff in the kitchen, but I only got this ONE of Roman pouring in an ingredient. He was very frustrating because he wanted to climb on the table over and over and over. With just keeping him safe, this actually was the hardest cake I ever made lol.

I also made a Hawaiian theme muffin tin meal (the cake from above, ham, whale crackers, and pineapple).

Anabel painted with coffee. I put some of the grounds from her sensory tub into a cup of water and let it sit overnight. She painted on a volcano shape. Then she poured paint over it to represent lava and glued some cotton balls on the top to represent smoke.
I also made a homemade book about coffee since I couldn’t find any books about coffee. I found pictures on Google to go along with the words but I didn’t get to print it out because I was out of ink, so we read it on the computer. The text of the book was:
Hawaiian Coffee
Many grown-ups like to drink coffee. Do you know coffee comes from a plant? The only state in the United States that grows coffee is Hawaii. The Hawaiian coffee plant is called Kona. It grows little white flowers and red fruit. Farmers get coffee beans out of the red fruit.Then the coffee beans are roasted in a big machine. Then the beans are grinded up in a grinder. Afterwards, the beans are called “coffee grounds”. Then the coffee grounds are put into a coffee machine that adds hot water and makes it into a cup of coffee!
I am sure that some might think its weird to teach my (almost) 3-year-old about coffee, but I think she could learn a lot from this, such as state industry; how food gets to our house from the fields; about natural dyes and also, we threw in some sensory experiences and baking! Hawaii is the only state in the US that grows coffee so this was part of our Hawaii theme in our United States Project.

Sandy Playdough

2011-07-19T08:50:00.001-04:00

I got the recipe to make this sandy playdough from Counting Coconuts, it is playdough with sand mixed in. I just used play sand from my kids’ sandbox.

The accessories she had to play with were some sea animals, a fish cookie cutter, a roller, and some shells that we have collected.

She made prints in the “sand” with the animals and cut out a few fish shapes, but she mostly played with the turtles. She buried them in the sand because they were cold and she had them ride on the back of a fish shape because they don’t know how to swim. Then one turtle kept hiding and getting lost from the other one. She played with this for the longest time. Since baby brother was sleeping, I just took a break and did some reading while she entertained herself.

Rhythm Sticks

2011-07-18T18:51:00.001-04:00

I made some rhythm sticks by buying a 3/4 x 48 in dowel from Lowes. Then I cut it into four pieces, making 2 sets of rhythm sticks. I forgot to make an extra set for myself, so until I make another trip to buy another dowel, I’ve been using wooden spoons. I think I will add ridges and paint later, but this is working for now. They are so much fun! I haven’t been able to keep my hands off of them! I think Anabel prefers the scarves still, but Roman and I are all for the sticks.

I’ll admit I was a little nervous giving my rough-and-tumble boy some sticks. He turns anything into a bat! But he did okay because he was trying to imitate his sister and me. I still wouldn’t trust him on his own though because I know it wouldn’t be long before he used them as a weapon.

To introduce the rhythm sticks to my kids, we watched this YouTube video and then we played the song on our own. The song in the video is also one that is included in the book 101 Rhythm Instrument Activities. I think the book has many good activities, I’m not sure if they are original or not so I will not include the songs that we used from the book. We also watched this Hap Palmer song and followed along.

Aloha Shirt and Hula Dancing

2011-07-18T11:55:00.001-04:00

Of course, we can not do a Hawaii theme without hula dancing. We listened to some hula music on Youtube (including the song from Lilo and Stitch). No pics of her dancing because I was dancing along of course!

Anabel made her Aloha shirt by using the same technique that we used when we made a onesie for Roman over a year ago. Even though she was a lot younger then, I think it was easier last time because we used a leaf which was more sturdy than the flower we used this time. I squirted yellow fabric paint on a plate which she then applied to a roller. She rolled over the flower with the yellow paint.

Then Anabel picked up the flower and pressed it (paint side down) onto the shirt. Then she used a piece of paper to press down on the flower so it would make a good print. Then she lifted the flower up, moved the position and tried it again. She got frustrated because the flower was so flimsy and she wanted me to straighten it out each time. Then she decided she didn’t want to do any more prints. The shirt was an old one that is already considered play clothes. Anabel has not wanted to take it off since she made it, she is very proud of her work!

We read the book Grandma Calls Me Beautiful. We had read the Alaskan version during our Alaska theme, called Mama Do You Love Me and I remember liking that one better. For one thing, I couldn’t get over that the girl was named Beautiful, it just seemed weird to read it that way. Just a personal opinion. The illustrations were beautiful though, very bright and filled with Hawaiian imagery that I pointed out to Anabel. I think it would be a good art lesson to compare the warm colors of this book with the cool colors of the Mama book.

Amazon has lots of books about Aloha shirts, but my library only had one. It was this coffee table book, that I admit that I didn’t read one word of. But Anabel and I flipped through the pages and looked at the different designs that were on the shirts. I pointed out that many of the shirts had pictures of flowers (especially hibiscus), palm trees, and pineapples and it is because these things are very common in Hawaii.

I am linking this up to Made By Little Hands Monday.

Reading To a Therapy Dog

2011-07-17T09:31:00.001-04:00

Our library has a program where therapy dogs visit to listen to children read books. This was the first time we went. Anabel took a book that she knows word for word, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? We arrived a little early and there was only one dog there and Anabel walked right up and said “Can I read to your dog?” The woman told her she sure could but she would have to wait until another little boy finished his turn. We sat to wait, but then more dogs started arriving.

The dog she read to was named Sunshine. She thought it was funny that the dog kept sticking his nose over the top of the book to “look at the pictures”.

For reading to Sunshine, she received a sticker that had a picture of him and she got to pick out a free book. Recognizing the Rainbow Fish, she immediately went for A Fishy Story. The book also had foil stickers and she has put them all over all of us. Oh and a funny thing I remembered, on the way home, I asked her if she like reading to the dogs and she said, “No mommy, I didn’t read to a lot of dogs, just one dog” lol.

I am linking this up to Link and Learn at No Time For Flashcards.

What We Are Reading

2011-07-16T09:43:00.001-04:00

Owl Babies is a book that we have read for the first time this week. It is about 3 baby owls who can’t find their mother. For some reason, this is a theme that Anabel has always been drawn to. If she sees a character crying in a book, she would ask if they were crying for their mommy or daddy. When she plays with toys, she often makes them look for their mommies or she makes them be sad that they can’t find their daddy. Or if she leaves somewhere with her dad, when she returns she will excitedly run to me and yell, “mommy, you was crying for me? You missed me and you wanted me to come home so you was crying for me?” We rarely leave her alone with other people, and when we do, its with family members that she is very comfortable with. She is not a nervous or really sensitive child, so I think she just works this out by herself and is okay with it. I think it is probably pretty normal for kids her age.

Little Monkey Lost has the same theme. A monkey gets separated from his mother and his troop of monkeys. He goes to look for them and encounters all different types of monkeys before he finally returns home. I think the illustrations are nice and the monkeys are all very cute. On the last couple pages, there is information about the different types of monkeys that are mentioned in the story.

I think another reason that Anabel likes Owl Babies is because she just likes owls. We are also reading the Catwings series and her favorite parts include the owls. The owls are the bad guys in the books, but she still likes that part. The series are about cats that are born with wings. You can read about the activity we did here.

Roman’s favorite book is still the same as it has been for the last few weeks, Happy Mother Goose. We have 3 of the nursery rhyme board books by Mary Engelbreit and he likes them all, but his favorite is definitely Happy. The rhymes it includes are Little Miss Muffet, Little Boy Blue, Three Little Ghostesses, Sing a Song of Sixpence, Lucy Locket and Bobby Shafto.

I am linking this up to What We Are Reading.

Catwings

2011-07-16T09:40:00.001-04:00

We have been reading the Catwings series by Ursula K. Le Guin. The are short books, around 4 or 5 chapters and 50 pages or so. I read each book out loud to Anabel, 1 or 2 chapters a day, and it would only take 2 or 3 days. each. There are colored illustrations on almost every page. Anabel enjoyed the books, but her favorite parts were the owls that appear in some of the books. She said, “the owl scared the cat and fly after the cat”. We have been acting out the books with some of our toys. I made our very own catwings by attaching cardstock wings to one of her cat figurines with a rubber band.

Here are pics from when we were retelling Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings. I spread a big piece of green felt to represent the forest. Then Anabel worked on using small pieces of Lincoln Logs to set up the “trees”. I made the Catwings’ barn and Alexander’s house out of Logs as well. Unfortunately, we bought our Lincoln Logs used. They were super cheap but really they mostly only have the tiny pieces, most of the big logs are missing. Therefore, the house and the barn are really short!

She acted out an entire scene all by herself! I just recorded it.

Catwings (A Catwings Tale) The first book in the series is about four cats who are born with wings. They are born in the city and their mother sends them off to find somewhere safer to live. They find a forest and eventually a farm, where two young children find them and care for them.

Catwings Return In the second book of the series, two of the cats return to the city to look for their mother. They encounter their half sister and rescue them from danger. They are reunited by their mother, who has found a kind human to live with.

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings The main character of the third book is Alexander. He is a normal cat who gets lost and is rescued by one of the catwings.

Jane On Her Own (Catwings) In the final book of the series, Jane decides to set out on her own adventure.

I’m linking this up to What My Child is Reading.

Ear Piercing

2011-07-15T10:07:00.001-04:00

Anabel has been requesting earrings for a while now, but I wasn’t ready. I have nothing against ear piercings but I just didn’t want to poke my little baby girl if I didn’t have to. But as an early birthday present, she finally got her ears pierced. We watched this YouTube video to prepare her for what was going to happen. When we first got to the ear piercing place, she said, “mommy where is the chair?” then she told the women, “you’re gonna put a dot on my ear?” She sat very still and waited while they pierced her ear. Two women did it at the same time, one on each ear. She opened her mouth in shock and then a few moments later started crying. But she stopped to tell thank you. We showed her earrings to her in a mirror and she giggled while she was still crying. Then she looked at all the earrings on display and decided she wanted all of them. I told her she might get a new pair for her birthday or for Christmas.

Games With Our Daughter

2011-07-13T14:42:00.001-04:00

My husband and I play various “games” with Anabel. They are just spontaneous games that begin and end out of nowhere. He has his with her and I have mine. But he has more. I am more likely to read to our kids or do a project with them or sing them a song and cuddle with them, but he is so good at just playing and having a great time with them just because. I know I’ve said it before on my blog but my husband is seriously one of the best dads I have ever seen. He literally has so much fun with our kids and they are crazy about him!

*Kiss Like An Animal

This is a game that I play with Anabel that I stole from my grandma (who raised me). When I was little girl, she would give me butterfly kisses (fluttering her eyelashes on my cheek) and gnome kisses (we would rub our noses together). Well one day we were watching The Lion King and Nala and Simba licked each other. Anabel thought it was gross but I told her that is how lions kiss. Then I decided to show her our butterfly kisses and then I showed her the gnome kisses (but I called them rabbit kisses). I also added a great big bear hug in there. So now, Anabel will tell me “kiss me like a turtle” or some other animal and I have to come up with a way that animal would kiss or hug. Sometimes I tell her the same thing back and if it isn’t an animal that is in our usual repertoire, she will just give me a normal hug or kiss.

*My Friend Does This

This game started out as a game between my niece and my daughter. My niece Alicia told Anabel that her friend (presumably from the preschool that she goes to) does this, and she made her eyes big and stuck out her tongue. So my daughter countered with, “my friend does this” and she wiggled around and pointed to the sky. They played like this back and forth, making up silly things that their friends do. Well my husband adopted this game and he plays it with our daughter all the time, they each try to one up each other on who has the craziest “friend”

*The Sound Effect Game

My husband will make a funny sound effect and my daughter will copy it. Or another version is that he will make a sound effect and she will tell him, “no don’t make a [insert sound effect] sound” (but of course she wants him to continue so she can tell him it again. One of their favorite sound effects is “loop” which Anabel made up as the sound to turn on and off the light.

*The Stay Little Game

This is a game that Anabel requests from me all of the time. She will say, “Mommy, tell me to stay little” and so I will LOUDLY say “Anabel, I want you to stay little like an ant” and she will loudly say back “no, I don’t want to be an ant, I want to be bigger!”. So I will respond with, “Anabel, I want you to stay little like a ladybug” or “a piece of sand” or “a tear drop” or whatever small thing I can think of. Each time Anabel will respond with the same, “no, I don’t want to be a tear drop, I want to be bigger!” And I have to say it loudly, because if I don’t, she will stop and say, “no, you have to say it louder!”

*Roll Me Like a Taco

This is more of a ritual. Every night, I read to my daughter, but she can’t go to sleep until her daddy “rolls her like a taco” (this is exactly how she requests it). Then she gives him a hug around his neck and hangs off for a few seconds and then she lets go and falls back into the bed.

Hawaiian Math and More Light Box Activities

2011-07-13T08:59:00.001-04:00

The state flower of Hawaii is the yellow hibiscus. I bought a pack of plastic hibiscus leis to use as math manipulatives for our Hawaii theme. They came 3 for a $1. I cut them up to use but I left the green one intact because they make a cool clinking noise that Roman loves. Anabel sorted (independently) the flowers by large, medium and small on my request. I helped her make an AB pattern, which is something she hasn’t grasped yet. It only took a couple minutes to complete those two activities and then she started free playing with the flowers. She was pretending that the little flowers were playing with their friends but then they got sad for their daddies (the big flowers) and then they went home.

I also bought some party favors that are little clear mazes. They looked pretty cool on the box. Anabel wasn’t attracted to them too much, after examining them for a few seconds, she just put them aside. But Roman really enjoyed them! He shook them and banged them on the table. That was such a blessing because he didn’t get in his sister’s way at all (he tends to try to take away whatever she is playing with. He played with the mazes while she played with the hibiscus flowers.

The next day we used colored sand on the light box. We did this during Roman’s nap. I bought a sand art kit from DT. It came with 4 small bags of colored sand: pink, purple, yellow and blue. They also had a bigger container of just pink sand but I chose to buy the kit because I thought she could just use one color at a time but you can imagine how well that worked out! We ended up putting all four colors on at the same time and they inevitably started getting mixed up together. I know soon it will just look like grayish brown sand, so I might have to pick up the pink sand next time I go.

I had to take a pic of her drawing. This is a pig. Notice on the right is the curly piggy tail. The four long vertical lines are his legs and on top of his legs are a sad face and tears. There is no body :). I am impressed with how her drawing is coming along.

I know I have been posting an obscene amount of videos lately, but this is my “memory” book so I will probably continue to do so lol.

I am linking this up to Science Sunday at Adventures in Mommydom.

Assembly Line Art

2011-07-13T01:05:00.001-04:00

Anabel is in a phase where she produces (what I call) assembly line art. I really don’t know how to encourage her to take more time on each piece. Its as if she wants to see how many pieces she can complete in the least amount of time. She paints on most days and she almost always paints the same things (a rainbow and the letters A and H are her favorites), in the above photo she also painted a tornado. And after she finishes one piece she will announce who she made it for “this is for my tio Lipe and this is for Grandma” and then quickly move on to the next. I remember reading in an art book (see below) that a teacher (the author) would talk to her students about what they were painting to help encourage them to add more detail. So far, it hasn’t worked with Anabel. For example, her favorite thing to paint is a rainbow. So I will ask her if she has ever seen a rainbow and she will say yes. Then I will ask her what it looked like or what the weather was like or who she was with when she saw the rainbow. She will answer the questions just fine but she will answer as she is moving on to the next painting lol.

Roman is an artist now too. I had kind of gotten used to my daughter who only makes small messes while she paints. I forgot what it is like to have a toddler with the paint. I think it is time to get out the tablecloth to protect our workspaces again!

Dancing With Scarves

2011-07-12T13:52:00.001-04:00

I “made” some inexpensive scarves for us to play with. I went to Joanne’s and bought a half yard of 6 colors (red, blue, green, purple, yellow, orange) of nylon tulle. It was $1.49 a yard so each half yard was only 75 cents! Then when I got home, I cut color again in half. We now have 12 colored scarves for under 6 dollars. While I was cutting them, my son was already experiencing them by wrapping himself up in them and laughing!

We used the scarves to dance to two songs. The first was Hap Palmer’s Magic Scarf. It is a great song! He sings about using the scarves to pretend. Some of the things you pretend are that the scarf is a “pom pom waving in the air”; the tail of a pony; a spooky ghost; a cloud floating in the air; a wave in the ocean; and a superhero cape. The music changes as you pretend each new thing. The second song that we dance to is a color song called Look Up High and Look Down Low. I think that any song about colors would probably work. The song tells you to “look up high and look down low. Colors, colors, green I know”. So we grab the green scarf and wave it around and then repeat as each new color is called.

Roman danced with us a little bit, but he took a break to try and clean the sliding glass door with the scarf. Any suggestions for new songs to go with the scarves?

I don’t use workbooks with my daughter, but I had bought the Kindergarten workbook for a dollar and it included the cd that has the color song on it (there was scribbling all over the pages). I did use the animal cards included in the workbook for this activity and some of the cardstock letters for this discovery bottle.

I also thought that I would mention that I keep the scarves in a drawstring bag made out of my husband’s gown from his college graduation. He was going to throw it out, but I kept the cap for pretend play and my grandma made me two drawstring bags and a cape out of it. The cape is the number one item in Anabel’s dress up box. She uses it to be a am-gician (magician), a superhero, and a green knight (she got that off of a Franklin movie).

I am linking this up to Tot School

First Haircut

2011-07-11T20:56:00.001-04:00

So we decided that Roman needed a haircut. His hair sticks straight up on the top and everywhere we go people tell us, “I love his hair”, many of them think that we are purposely trying to get him to have a mohawk. Well we don’t mind the hair on top, but the hair in the back was getting a little crazy. So I decided to give him a little trim with my scissors. My husband and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe! I am really regretting that I didn’t take a pic of what I did to him. I don’t know why I felt the need to do that, especially since my brother-in-law is a barber!

We ended up having to take him to his uncle to repair the damage that I had done.

Vocabulary

2011-07-11T16:52:00.001-04:00

I just posted a video of my son so I thought I had to post one of my daughter. I am somewhat of a theatrical reader while reading to my daughter. If someone gasps, I gasp. Well, I recently started reading short chapter books to my daughter. As I was reading one, I noticed that she was acting out some of the parts before I did. If I read aloud that someone sighed, she sighed. She also likes to ask me if she can jump or bow if someone in the story is doing it. Funnily enough, she doesn’t try to act out any picture books we read. Only chapter books. Some words that I noticed that she can act out (with me only saying or reading the word) are chuckle, giggle, sigh, gasp, tremble, flutter, gallop, wring [as in hands], and pout. For some reason, while I was recording her, the word sneeze confused her. She definitely knows what that means lol.

His New Word is “Read!”

2011-07-11T15:32:00.001-04:00

Roman has learned a new word this week: READ! He will bring me a book and sit in my lap and say “read, read, read, read”. I wanted to record him saying it, so I gave him a book, and he started flipping through the pages, saying read, read, read. I am a really happy and proud mama. One of Anabel’s first words was “book” (well she said boo). Me and my kids are definitely book lovers :) My husband says my son look like the baby in the book that he is holding!

Collage on the Light box

2011-07-10T23:35:00.001-04:00

So we did some art on the light box today. I taped a piece of contact paper on the box and then put tissue paper and cellophane remnants in a box for her to collage with. After arranging the pieces as she wanted to, she used a black perm marker to draw and write on it a little bit.

Anabel said she was making this for her Daddy. She said, “he is gonna love it and he is gonna hug it and say I love this so much!” He heard her say that, so he said exactly that when she gave it to him. He hung it on the sliding glass door, so that the natural light would shine through.

The frosting is flaking off the lid a little bit, not sure why. I felt really good when I saw this light box at Discount School Supply. It looks a lot like the one I made…but for $210! Next light box projects that I have planned is some math and some water play.

I am linking this up to Tot School

The Birds Are Back!

2011-07-10T11:56:00.001-04:00

About a year ago, a mama bird made a nest in a tree in our backyard. Well the mama is back with her brand new babies! It is very exciting to watch. I pointed out to my daughter that the mama bird used some string in her nest. I also told her that the mama bird is a mockingbird which is the state bird of Florida and that all mockingbird eggs look like that, with little spots on them. We observed the mama feeding her babies. She would fly away and then return with a bug in her mouth and then fly into the tree. We didn’t want to scare her off so we didn’t get close enough to see them eat the food, but it was still fun watching her leave and come back.

One of the times when the mama left, we got closer to get a peek and the little babies opened their mouths at us. Sooo cute!

We read a book that we own called From Egg to Robin. In simple words, it describes how a robin makes a nest and feeds its babies. As we were reading it, Anabel said, “Mommy we will kill the birds if we get too close and the mommy won’t feed them”. I guess she said that because I told her we can’t get near the nest when the mommy is feeding the babies, but I never said anything about killing!

Dance Stories and Geography

2011-07-09T16:28:00.001-04:00

We are reading a book about dance stories and learning geography at the same time. We are using our shower curtain map to point out where all of the stories come from. Anabel can locate FL on the map (where we live) but as we were looking at the map this time she excitedly said, “I found another Florida!” and she was pointing to India lol. It is a peninsula like Florida, so she is on the right track! You can also notice that even though it is in the afternoon in July in the middle of summer in Florida, Anabel is insisting on wearing her Buzz Lightyear pajamas….her long sleeved and pants pajamas. Sigh.

The Barefoot Book of Dance Stories (Barefoot Books) An introduction of the book associated each story with a dance and country or region. After reading a story, we would locate the country on the map and then watch Youtube videos of the dance. I just skipped over the story from Scotland because I didn’t care for it.

Waltz-Germany

Noh-Japan

Limbo-West Indies

Flamenco-Spain

Polka-Czech Republic

Then we played with our set of castanets. She mostly wanted to pretend they were monsters eating each other.

Frog Observation

2011-07-09T14:53:00.001-04:00

Fresh out of a bath, Anabel noticed that it was raining. She ran over to the sliding glass door to get a better look and she noticed a frog climbing up the screen door. She sat and watched it for a long time. She said she was worried that it was going to break its leg.

Light Box

2011-07-08T19:44:00.001-04:00

I got the instructions on how to make your own light box from the wonderful Teach Preschool! It took me a minute because I couldn’t find the battery operated fluorescent lights. I gave up and just bought the ones with the cord and my husband drilled a hole in the side of it so I could run the cords through. I wanted to try it out instantly so I ran to my supply closet and found some letter erasers and some glass stones. I only got the one pic because my 13 month old son wanted to play too and I didn’t want to be distracted in case he tried to slip one in his mouth.

Then I got out some shaving cream and a little bit of food coloring and we all drew in it.

Roman actually never tried a taste test. But he did frustrate my daughter because he smeared all of her letters and her rainbows. He worried me a little because he kept leaving and coming back with his hands full of colored shaving cream. I wasn’t sure where I was going to have to be cleaning that off of! Be prepared to see lots of light box posts! I found some ideas from Play at Home Mom. She had the same shaving cream idea that I had, but a lot of fun ones that I didn’t think of. I am going to try her colored water one this week! She also makes me really want an overhead projector :)

Piggie and Elephant

2011-07-08T11:59:00.001-04:00

We have been playing with these DT animal puppets. Roman loves when I grab his nose or fingers with the puppets. Anabel and I have been acting out books from the Elephant and Piggie stories. I love it because she is old enough to remember the stories and really act them out. Of course, we have been known to ad lib! I got this book recommendation from another blog but I can’t remember which one it was!

My Friend is Sad (An Elephant and Piggie Book)

Glitter and Glue Paintings

2011-07-07T10:23:00.001-04:00

I had this idea to use spiky balls to make fireworks. Dip them in glue then make prints on the paper, then cover with glitter..voila---fireworks! But it didn’t work out like that. Anabel just made a big circle with the spiky ball. She told me she was mixing white paint. Roman dabbed his just fine, but it still didn’t come out the way it did in my mind. Anabel’s art is on the left and Roman’s is on the right. But they still had a good time. Next time I have to give them each their own glue, because my son didn’t want his sister to use the glue. He has dried up glue all over his body, he looks like a shedding lizard or something.

Reading Incentive at the Library

2011-07-06T13:44:00.001-04:00

Our library has a reading incentive program for the summer. You have to read 10 hours and then you receive a free book. If your child does not read yet then you can read to them. Anabel got to turn in her reading log today and then pick out her free book. There were a lot of good ones to choose from, but the first thing she saw was The Cat in the Hat, so she wanted that one. It isn’t a Dr. Suess book, its called Oh, the Pets You Can Get!: All About Our Animal Friends (Cat in the Hat's Learning Library). Its all about different pets and their care.

Fireworks

2011-07-06T13:07:00.001-04:00

We went to the city’s display of fireworks. While we waited, Anabel enjoyed a little train ride.

We also enjoyed some s’mores. Since Anabel’s first 4th of July, I have made it a tradition to have s’mores (it was also on our Summer Bucket List this year). It was so hot that the chocolate bars completely melted, so I just opened a corner and then poured the chocolate on the cracker like sauce. Anabel only took a couple of bites out of her s’more because she had her hands covered over her ears the entire night almost.

It all started when the National Guard had set off a cannon. Anabel screamed and said that they had hurt her feelings when they scared her. Then she didn’t want to take her hands off!

Roman on the other hand, had a great time. He literally started laughing when the fireworks went “boom”. He loved it. When Anabel was a baby she cried and cried during the fireworks until we took her inside.

And then he just passed out in his dad’s arms. I don’t know how he slept through all of that noise. I guess he was just exhausted since it was already 1 1/2 hours past his bedtime. He is usually a pretty light sleeper.

Erupting Volcano

2011-07-06T09:04:00.001-04:00

In our Hawaii theme, we are learning about volcanoes. We made a volcano out of homemade playdough (coincidentally, these are both two things on our Summer Bucket List…yes I had planned it that way lol).

I let my son and daughter alternate putting things in the pan for the homemade playdough, but Roman accidentally poured one of his scoops all over himself instead!

The recipe I used was:

1 cup of flour
1/2 cup of salt
1 cup of water
1 tbsp cooking oil
2 tsp cream of tartar
food coloring (I used red and green to achieve a brownish color).
Mix together and cook over medium heat until it forms a dough, stirring constantly.

Then we formed a volcano around a paper towel tube.

Then we put baking soda and red food coloring down the tube. We poured in the vinegar and watched it erupt! We did this over and over and over to the amusement of my children.

Whale Math

2011-07-05T13:17:00.002-04:00

I caught the funniest expression on my daughter’s face. She was rolling the die to play a grid game and the die knocked one of her fish off of the grid. She exclaimed, “oh no!” lol. This was a grid game that I made to in the whale section of our Hawaii theme. Since humpback whales eat krill and small fish, she had to give one fish (Goldfish crackers) to each whale.

Another grid game I made had a clipart of an island surrounded by waves. She had to put one mini whale eraser (DT) in the ocean, riding the waves. She’s funny, she had to have all of the whales facing in the same direction.

We also used Goldfish crackers to do some graphing. She got a bowl full of crackers and she had to line them up according to color and then we counted them afterwards. We had more yellow than any other color. I got this sheet from Prekinders.com

Star Cookie Cutter Printing

2011-07-04T10:51:00.001-04:00

We did some star cookie cutter printing with blue and red paint on white paper in honor of Independence Day. I’m very happy and proud that my 13 month old son (as of today!!!!) is now getting to join in our art activities! He made a few prints and only tried to taste the paint once! That’s a victory for me :)

His final art! ^^^

After painting a red rainbow (which is her favorite thing to paint and draw at the moment), Anabel joined in with the star printing too. She decided to rub the cookie cutter back and forth a few times on the paper too.

4th of July Breakfast

2011-07-04T10:41:00.001-04:00

This is the breakfast I made for my kids…star shaped pancakes, strawberries, bananas, and blueberries. Yummy, Yummy! I hope everyone has a great 4th of July and be safe with any explosives! I’m hoping the hubby gets off of work early.

4th of July Fruit Snack

2011-07-03T22:27:00.001-04:00

As Anabel is soon to be 3 years old, I have noticed that she is gaining new skills. It makes doing things in the kitchen that much more fun because she is at a new level of independence (with supervision of course). We made a fun and delicious fruit flag, I found this idea at the always fun Superheroes and Princesses blog. She sliced up some bananas using a butter knife and I sliced some strawberries. Then we alternated them on bamboo skewers and yes I had to point out that we were making a pattern! Then we added blueberries on top to finish it off. I didn’t give Roman a skewer but he enjoyed a nice fruit bowl.

My Daughter’s Video Book Review

2011-07-03T21:42:00.001-04:00

We finished reading Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl and Anabel has been telling everyone about it. I think her favorite part was when the rat in the story tells Mr. Fox to get out of the cellar because he was there first because that is the part that she has been acting out when she plays. Well I thought it would be cute to record her doing a book review. I mean how cute is a toddler book critic? But of course, she had to get very silly when the camera came out, so she was more playing around than anything else and she ended up getting hurt in the very end of the video because she was acting so silly! She wanted to pretend read and watch the video instead of answering my questions! lol. When not being recorded though, she will tell anyone about the book and she remembers more details than I expected, especially because we read this over about a week.

But I took the time to write out our interview:

Me: What’s your name?

A: Anabel

Me: Okay. Did you just read this book with your mommy?

A: Yeah

Me: Okay. Show it to me. (She opens book) What’s it called?

A: Its called The Fox

Me: Its called The Fox? What was it about? Look at mommy.

A: Where’s the bookmark?

Me: Oh I took the bookmark out already. Anabel, Anabel, did you like the book?

A: uh-huh

Me: What was it about?

A: Chapter 1, Mr. Bean (she starts “reading”)

Me: Mr. Bean?

A: Chapter 1. The fox went in the ground and he been running. And Bean and the farmers and Mrs. Boggis they were gonna kill him.

Me: They were gonna kill him?

A: He picked up something. And now he is gonna kill the foxes. And now the rocks were falling down. And they were digging with their feet. And they were digging, dagging, digging, dig and dig and dig. And Bean was gonna get him. The Bean…the Bean…and the fox was mad at my..at her mom. And they were digging again. And they were feening [frightening] him. And he was not sad, and he was, he was, she was glad. And um, the fox gonna found something. The end!

Me: Okay. So tell me what the book was all about since you just read it. You did a good job reading.

A: its about, its about a fox

[she is getting distracted at this point, wanting to watch the video that I am taking]

Me: And what happens to the fox?

A: the fox was gonna kill the…fox

[she is reaching for the camera]

A: the, the, the, the, awww, why you gotta put me out of your way?

[I pulled her back in front of the camera so I could finish the video]

Me: So tell me what happened in the book?

[I’m not giving up]

A: the book uh some Mrs. Fox found some animals.

Me: Mrs. Fox found some animals?

A: yeah

Me: And what did she do with those animals?

A: She found some

Me: What kind of animals did she find?

A: Badger

Me: Oh, she found a badger?

A: yeah

Me: And what did she do with the badger?

A: The badger was mad!

Me: Uh-oh. Why was the badger mad?

A: Because the Mrs. Fox….

[the chair falls on her]